Aunt Betsy’s girls, Daisy, Florrie and Rosie, whom Sibbie looked on as her sisters, were safe, though. Much to their chagrin, they hadn’t been dispatched to foreign places, but were nursing in various hospitals in and around London and Kent. They loved their work and spoke of the value of taking care of the wounded who were shipped to them day after day, but all secretly harboured a desire to work in field hospitals right at the heart of the action. Sibbie longed to be with them.

Marjie broke into her thoughts. ‘Mama says that they didn’t know where Paulo was until his letter came. Aunt Ella had been going half-mad. It appears that he received a notice that he was to be conscripted into the Service du Travail Obligatoire.’

‘What? Isn’t that the service that is forced to work in Germany?’

‘Yes, Mama says it is terrible, and that young men are never heard of after they go. I am ashamed that my people in the South of France are collaborating with Hitler.’

‘I know, but tell me, where did Paulo go?’ Even as she asked, Sibbie’s desire to read the letter he’d sent her burned into her heart, but she suppressed the longing, wanting to hear out Marjie and to comfort her.

‘He just disappeared into the night, but they now know that he joined the Maquis, a Resistance movement.’

‘Oh, Marjie, no! And Aunt Flors dares to put this in a letter to you?’

‘No. Well, not in so many words. Before I left for England, Mama told me that if war did break out, she would communicate in code. It’s complicated, and something she learned during her war. It involves misspelling, so that you are alerted to a sentence being in code. Here, look.’

Taking the letter, Sibbie read: The eldest of Ella’s pigons has flowen the nest.

‘See: it is the bad spelling of “pigeon” and “flown” that tells me this is code. Ella’s eldest is Paulo – he has gone.’

Next, Sibbie read: He did not like the confines of the enclosure and would not work alongside the other birds. We heard that he has gone to Monsiuer Marqs’s coop. But our youngest bird will do whatever is asked of him and is ready to fly our coop when asked.