She took Suzie’s wrist tightly in both hands, twisting them in opposite directions. Suzie did not cry out, but she grimaced and tears appeared in the corners of her eyes.

‘Don’t, Sabine, please don’t. I keep thinking, wondering what’s happening at home.’

The Brehmer Division had patrolled the region three months ago to clear the area of terrorists, leaving a pall of fear to dissuade people from helping the partisans. Stories had circulated of the Germans’ violence: ten people executed at Lartigue after a Maquis raid; twenty-five hostages shot, a village razed; a round-up of Jews in Racines, old people who hadn’t been able to hide or run away, taken by bus to the river bank and shot. But all these things had happened a long way away; it was more than thirty kilometres to Racines.

‘I heard a story,’ Sabine was whispering, her voice a harsh sibilant. ‘Henri was telling Micheline last week. I was in the scullery, and I knew he’d stop if I came out, so I hid behind the door.’

Outside in the sunshine crickets were singing. Suzie tried to concentrate on their rhythmical, mindless music, but Sabine’s voice was compelling.

‘They took the boy from La Tuiliere last week. He was in the field with the sheep when a bus full of Milice stopped on the road and forced him to get in. They said the partisans had passed that way and he must know them. They took him to Racines to the Hotel du Parc and they tortured him.’

‘Sabine …’

‘Do you know what they did? They hit him in the face. They kicked him in the shins. Again and again.’

Suzie glanced at Sabine who was making boxing gestures with her rolled fists. She looked down at the stones on the threshold where a party of ants was crossing into their lair in a disciplined column.

‘Then they stripped him naked and tied him to a table, face down, with his hands in handcuffs underneath. This was in the bar, at a cafe table. Imagine sitting there, at that table to take a cup of coffee where someone has been beaten. They beat him with a cosh with a lead ball on the end, which ripped his flesh, or with a leather belt with a buckle. They took turns to join in the fun. When one was tired, the others took over.

‘During the night he was tied standing up in the cellar with some other captives. That’s how Henri knew what had happened to him.’

A lizard lay in the sunshine in a crack between two stones. Suzie could see its neck swelling, falling, swelling.

‘In the morning they brought him back to the bar and hung him upside down by his feet. They shouted, Where are they? Where are the partisans? Who helps them? Who gives them food? They beat him and beat him until his kidneys burst and he died. Then they took his body out on one of their trips in the bus and threw it in the ditch. He never said a word.’