We were getting higher; the plain fell away below in a great pattern of dark-green and light-green squares. In the far distance, the towers of some town, which might have been Sainte-Brigitte; and nearer, the dark mass of the forest and Saint-Basile; and far to the east, like the blade of a knife, a sliver of steel light which could have been the sea.

The track became rougher, churned up by tank tracks and carriers; a metal sign, bullet-scarred, stated clearly, in large letters, ‘ATTENTION! INTERDIT! ZONE MILITAIRE! DÉFENSE DES MINES!’

Florence changed down, we drove slowly, easing over the ruts and holes in the track.

‘You see?’ she said happily. ‘We are not welcome.’

‘It would appear so.’

‘Can you hear the cannons roar?’

‘No. Nothing. Larks.’

‘Do you see a red flag flying anywhere? Look carefully all round.’

‘Not a sign. Nothing. Barbed wire, a fence, a skull-and-crossbones.’

‘Ah. That is a danger sign. The wire is to keep the soldiers in and us out. The village is not actually in the range, but …’ She shrugged, and drove slowly on.

‘What happens if we hit a mine?’

‘What do you think will happen? Bourn! Bourn! After all,’ she said reasonably, ‘we have been warned.’

On the left of the track, which had once been a minor road, the land was close-cropped by hares, rabbits and feral goats until it spilled over the edge of the cliff which fell some hundreds of metres to the plain below. Ahead, and to the right, the tower of a small church and the broken roofs of some houses huddled together as if they cowered in fear. There was a sun-faded painted sign for ‘BYRRH’ and another on the side of a crushed building for ‘DUBONNET’. The last three letters of the name were splattered by a shell blast. The metal sign announcing that we had reached ‘JERICHO 0 KM’ was twisted, rusted, colandered with bullet holes.

She stopped the car, wound down her window, and we sat in the strange, echoing silence. Then a bird started to sing, a goat bleated for its kid. We watched it skitter away across the fallen stones of the village.

Where the land fell steeply away to the plains below, a flurry of ravens planed and soared, wheeling high in the draughts, black and hard against the ache of blue-green sky. A wind, a continual wind at this height, wuthered and whiffled through stunted clumps of thyme, myrtle and cropped thorn. It seemed, from where we sat, that we were on the rim of the world; apart from larks, the anxious bleating of the goat, the cries and cackles of the ravens, there was no other sound. Wind and birds. Certainly no cannon.

I said, fairly abruptly, ‘I met Millar’s sister, from L’Hermitage, this morning. I am to go and see him on Saturday.’

She didn’t speak. I fiddled with the handle of the door, polishing it between forefinger and thumb.