‘Well, we can’t carry it on our backs, can we? He would have had to abandon it or sell it for next to nothing when we got to Bordeaux anyway.’

‘I suppose.’ Paul nodded.

‘We’ll just have to gather up as much as we can carry. Mum’s jewellery, a few bits of clothing and the documents. Then we’ll head back into town and try contacting Henderson by telephone. If that doesn’t work we’ll have to move south on foot. We’re both healthy – we should be able to walk it in four or five days.’

‘I guess,’ Paul said warily. ‘I just hope the German tanks don’t beat us to it.’

3Seventh arrondissement – a district of Paris, similar to a British postal district.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Marc felt like he was going to wake up. It would be one of those intense dreams, where your back is all sweaty and it takes a couple of seconds to realise that it’s not for real. But Paris was real.

For an hour he walked through streets of apartment blocks. Sometimes along grand boulevards with more cars queuing at the traffic lights than he saw passing the orphanage in a week. Other roads were narrow, with crates of bottles, overflowing bins and the smell of piss in the air.

These outer streets went on for so long that Marc began to wonder if he was going in circles. But occasional glimpses of the city centre reassured him, with the tall buildings gradually growing in size. He passed several Metro stations that could have whisked him away, but he’d never been on a train before and somehow imagined that he’d make a fool of himself or, worse, get mangled on an escalator or trapped between the doors.

There were signs of war everywhere: sandbags piled up in front of windows, anti-aircraft guns in the squares and German planes skimming overhead. The previous night had seen the heaviest bombardment of the war and Paris was capped by a cloud of ash and smoke that kept the sun under wraps. But the scale of the city made the odds of actually being shot or bombed seem slight.

Marc had spent his whole life dreaming about running away to Paris, but the longer he walked the more reality wore him down. He’d managed a good breakfast, but soon he’d be hungry again. Soon he’d need lunch, and dinner and a place to sleep, and clean clothes and … Human needs are relentless. The money would run out. He’d have to find work, or steal, or …