The children were enchanted with their hiding place. They began to play houses, planning to live there for ever, gathering up the leaves and pulling down the cobwebs that hung from the tree roots in the roof.

Micheline commented drily, ‘I’ve never seen you so keen to help with the housework at home.’

She and Florence were crouched on their haunches by the entrance. She said to her daughter, ‘You’d better go on to Lepech and tell them there. Try to get a message to your father.’

‘I’ll come back here then?’

Micheline pondered. ‘In a while I’ll go back to see what’s happened. We’ll meet here and decide where to go for the night.’

Florence crawled out.

‘We want to stay here,’ Sabine said, whining. ‘We like it here.’

‘You may prefer a softer bed after you’ve tried lying on these stones for a bit.’

‘They’re no harder than my bed in the convent.’

‘Nonsense. You don’t know when you’re well off, miss. Now, you’re to stay here and not go wandering around the woods. I’ll be back within an hour, I hope.’ She, too, clambered out, more ungainly than her daughter. The girls listened to the sound of her departure until the bouncing of displaced stones ceased.

They seated themselves on either side of the cave entrance to watch her go, in identical posture, their knees drawn up, like a pair of matching statues. They could hardly have been more different in their appearance. Sabine, the taller and larger, had a broad, white face with rudimentary features dominated by brown eyes, as hard as toffees. Her fine, dark curly hair, held back fiercely by grips and bands, had released itself in their rush through the woods and sprang forward in coils around her neck. Opposite her, Suzie rested her chin on her knee. Her blonde hair, cut in a pudding-basin style around her pointed, anxious face, made her look much younger than Sabine, although they were about the same age, thirteen.

‘We could eat our lunch,’ she suggested. She could judge a piece of bread to its last gram, and the hunk that Micheline had brought with her was bigger than the slice usually scrupulously doled out for lunch. She spread her legs to catch any crumbs in her skirt and began to nibble her bread.

‘We should really find something from the forest to eat with it,’ Sabine said. ‘Gather some berries, or trap an animal.’

‘No berries now,’ Suzie said practically. ‘No mushrooms, no nuts, no blackberries, not until September. A long wait.’

The bread disappeared quickly, even though it needed plenty of mastication to wash it down without water. Sabine licked a fingertip and pressed it into the grains in her lap, transferring them to her mouth.

‘Let’s play.’

She crawled forward, taking Suzie’s shoulders in her grip, leaning her forehead against hers. ‘I’ll stare you out. Whoever looks away gets a Chinese burn.’

A moment later she angrily slapped Suzie’s cheek. ‘You’re not playing. You’re not even trying.’