On Sundays they closed up shop and went for a walk in the woods, where they picnicked on custard tarts made without eggs. He carried me on his shoulders, singing and whistling as he walked along. During air raids we would hide under the billiard table with the dog. When he thought back to that period, he had the feeling ‘it was fate’. At the time of the Liberation he taught me to sing La Marseillaise, adding ‘tas de cochons’4 at the end to rhyme with ‘sillons’. Like the other people around him, he was 36in a gay, lively mood. When we heard the sound of a plane, he took me by the hand and led me outside into the street. He told me to look at the bird in the sky: the war was over.

Heartened by the spirit of optimism that swept France in 1945, he decided to leave the Valley. I was often ill and the doctor wanted to send me to a sanatorium. They sold the business and moved back to Y—, where they believed the windy climate and absence of streams or rivers would be good for my health. We travelled in the front of the removal van and arrived in Y— at the height of the October fair. The town had been burnt down by the Germans and the booths and merry-go-rounds rose from amongst the debris. For three months we lived in a small two-room flat with mud floors and no electricity, which had been lent to us by one of the family. None of the businesses they could afford were for sale. My father got a job filling in the holes left by the shells. In the evening my mother would comment, holding the rail for dishcloths which could be found on old-fashioned gas cookers, ‘How low can you get.’ He never replied. In the afternoon she would take me for a walk around town. Only the centre of Y— had been bombed and shops had been set up in private houses. To illustrate the extent of the deprivations we endured, one image: one day, night has already fallen, in a narrow window, the only patch of light in the street, pink, oval sweets sprinkled with icing sugar in their cellophane bags. They weren’t for us, we didn’t have any coupons.37

They found a business in a rural area halfway between the station and the hospice: a café-cum-grocery store which also supplied coal and firewood. As a child, my mother was sent there to do the shopping. It was a farmer’s cottage with an extension in red brick at one end and came with a garden, a large courtyard and several outhouses used for storage. To get from the shop to the café, you walked through a tiny room with a staircase leading up to the attic and bedrooms. Although this became the kitchen, the customers continued to use it as a passageway. The goods that needed to be kept in a dry place – coffee, sugar – were stored on the stairs and around the bedroom walls. The ground floor afforded no privacy whatsoever. The lavatory was in the back yard. At last we were living in the fresh air.