‘Oh don’t worry about that.’ Sabine smiled. ‘A free beer and a flash of cleavage and they’ll take you to Outer Mongolia if I ask them.’

‘You think?’ Marc smiled, but he didn’t doubt it for a second. He was only too aware of how girls as pretty as Sabine can play tricks with your mind.

It was nine a.m. and downstairs the café was already open and doing a reasonable trade. Sabine was off duty, so she sat at a table with Marc and they ate croissants with jam. Once they’d eaten she eyed up a couple of rowdy military police officers out on the terrace and pushed her boobs out as she gave them a sob story about how her little nephew needed to get to Paris to see his parents and couldn’t get on a train.

After dashing back upstairs to grab his things and kissing Sabine goodbye, Marc clambered into the filthy rear compartment of a canvas-covered army truck and set off towards Paris. He shared the space with a jangling mass of abandoned helmets and rifles, a crate of rattling cider bottles and two muddy Alsatians that looked ferocious, but seemed content to lie down and let the journey pass with as little fuss as possible.

Up front, the driver took great pleasure in blasting his horn and forcing refugees out of the road. It was cruel, but Marc couldn’t help laughing as the passenger leaned out of the cab and yelled ten points for an elderly woman who fell over and twenty-five for a heavily laden handcart that toppled into a ditch.

‘Peasants,’ the driver said to Marc, when he pulled up and stood urinating over the back wheel of the truck. His posh accent indicated a good background. ‘France is shit, the war is shit, everything’s shit!’

‘Vive la shitty France,’ his companion yelled from up front.

Then the driver asked Marc to pass out four bottles of cider and told him that he could take one for himself. Marc had tasted alcohol a couple of times, but he’d never been drunk and didn’t think it would be a good state in which to arrive in a strange city.

After climbing back into the cab, the driver set off even more erratically, swerving between lanes and blasting the horn. The speed also crept up and Marc could no longer see the funny side as he was thrown around the rear compartment. Even the dogs stood up and started scratching against the floor and barking like mad.

‘Slow down!’ Marc screamed, as he banged on the rear of the cab. ‘You’re gonna get us all killed.’