One afternoon that first autumn they had been sent out by Micheline to gather chestnuts. Suzie enjoyed such activities. The woods were always beautiful. The golden light filtered between the trunks of the trees of the chestnut wood, illuminating their blotched, silvery bark. She was a good observer and, squatting under the trees, she hunkered round, picking the fattest bulbs out of their prickly shells. It was an undemanding activity, one in which her sharp attention had no reference to herself.

When their baskets were full, they walked home, climbing the cliff path from the valley. Suzie was trailing behind Sabine, searching for late field mushrooms in the field in front of the house. She heard Sabine calling to her and, looking up, could not see her.

Awakening to danger, she realised that Sabine had disappeared into a covert of rough undergrowth and young trees.

‘Suzie, come down here. I need you. I want you to give me a hand.’

Abandoning her basket, she crept forward, stooping under the gothic architecture of dead bramble canes, until she reached the edge of a rocky pit hidden from view by the tangle of vegetation. Sabine was squatting below ground level, like a frog beside a dry pond, at the edge of a hole in the ground fringed with dead grasses.

‘I can’t see where …’

It was no good; excuses never worked. Sabine’s peremptory voice, ordering, then threatening, compelled her to ease herself down on her stomach, legs dangling until she found a foothold. She knew that she had reached Sabine when her ankles were seized and she was pulled abruptly onto the ledge to join her.

‘Sabine, how are we going to get up again?’

‘We’re going on down.’

Suzie clung miserably to the rock while Sabine looked for the next stage of their route, peering down into the narrowing bowl. Suzie could envisage the next stage: a descent into the abyss. She dared not even look at the hole which should have contained something – earth, grass, water – but was filled instead with nothing but darkness. She tried to convince herself that there was no danger. Even if they were stuck, glued to the rock like lizards on the house wall, if they shouted and shouted, surely someone, Henri in the fields, Micheline in the farmyard, would hear them and come to their rescue. Sabine, however, was not interested in relying on others to extract her from danger.

She had seen a foothold and was lowering herself further into the pit. Suzie was obliged to follow. Soon the sky above them was reduced to a disc, shaded with branches. It was harder to see where they were placing their feet and hands. The circumference of the bowl was narrowing. Suzie could see no way out and no way back.

‘There’s fresh air coming out of there.’ Sabine licked her finger and held it over the darkness. ‘We must be able to get out down there.’ She contemplated the hole, tipping a pebble into the void. They listened to the silence that swallowed up the stone. ‘You go first.’