She must have drifted into unconsciousness, and was woken by shouting in the corridor. It was in German, and by the sounds of it someone was telling her interrogator off. Soon after that, she heard two gendarmes speaking. He had a real go at le furet, told him it wasn’t his job to kill prisoners!

A doctor came to see her that night and said she needed to be in hospital. She was taken on a stretcher to Dijon prison on rue d’Auxonne, where there was a rudimentary infirmary. She was aware of little for the next day or so, but when she came round, an orderly told her she was lucky to be alive.

Le furet has such a terrible reputation… Apparently you told him nothing and he got even angrier than usual. Take this medicine and pretend to be unconscious. With some luck they’ll take you to Fort d’Hauteville.

‘What’s that?’

It’s a prison just outside the city and they have a proper hospital there. After that they’ll take you to one of their camps… not nice places, but at least you’ll be away from le furet.

The orderly returned the next day, whispering urgently as he cleaned the floor around her bed.

They’ve arrested so many résistants… now they’re looking for the rest. They found an Englishman down in Fauverne… Apparently he managed to get a message out and destroy his transmitter and then burn all his code pads before killing himself. So brave…

The following night, she woke with a start: in the gloom she made out a man in a large coat standing silently at the foot of her bed, arms folded. She asked in French who was there, and when a nurse turned a light on, she saw it was the Ferret.

‘No one,’ he hissed, ‘gets the better of me.’ He snapped his fingers and two orderlies appeared with a stretcher, which she was bundled onto. Pain seared through her body and she felt the bleeding start again. She was carried into the prison yard, where a warder stopped them. From his uniform he looked quite senior.

‘Not here, sir, please not inside the prison.’

‘Who says?’

‘There’ll have to be an inquiry.’ He was wringing his hands.

‘Very well.’ The Ferret snapped at the orderlies: ‘Take her outside and put her on the pavement.’

Her main regret was not having written to Nicholas. She’d thought about that in the hospital, but was too weak, and also worried what would happen to him if they found the letter. It was agony when the orderlies dumped the stretcher on the pavement before hurrying away. She watched as the Ferret removed a revolver with a long barrel from his coat and pointed it at her. It was a strange way to end one’s life, she thought, lying on a wet pavement in a foreign country hoping the man who was about to kill would hurry up.

An annoyance, as her mother would have said.

Un dérangement.