A gust of wind turned the rain into a dark curtain. Marc had grey streaks running all over his skin as he closed his mouth tight and shielded his eyes with a hand. He glanced around desperately for somewhere to shelter. The church at the bottom of the hill would have been ideal, but it was still a couple of minutes away, even if he ran.

Marc noticed that the nearest house had a small porch. The front gate was blocked by the overgrown hedge on either side, but he ducked through and ran up to the front door, then stood under a stone archway just as the rain started to really belt down.

Dark swirls streamed down a path made from black and white tiles as Marc stared through a crack in the wooden shutters into the front room. Given the state of the garden he was surprised to see that it was reasonably well furnished, although he noticed that the soft furnishings were covered in brown dustsheets, as if the owner had gone away for a long time.

As the rain pelted, Marc started wondering about the house. It looked pretty comfortable inside and, with the Germans on the march, it didn’t seem likely that the owner would be returning any time soon. Maybe he could break in.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Rosie cleaned up Paul’s cuts with disinfectant, then they began sorting through the luggage and packing bare essentials into two small suitcases: clothes, their mother’s jewellery, their father’s gold cufflinks, a French road map, toothbrushes and a few small items of toiletries. The most painful decision was over the photo album. They’d never manage to carry the whole thing, with its heavy cardboard cover, so they each took a few favourites and solemnly left behind hundreds of photographs mounted on black pages, with comments written in white pencil by their mother.

Then the siblings made a careful study of their father’s wallet and pocket book to see if they could find a number for Charles Henderson. They sat close on the dry grass beside the car, wading through scribbled notes and details of department-store buyers, shipping-line engineers, members of the French military and jottings on restaurants and hotels where their father had found a good meal or comfortable bed during his days on the road. But they couldn’t find any contact details for Henderson.

‘Hopeless,’ Rosie declared, after three-quarters of an hour. ‘I think we’d better get moving.’

Paul insisted on taking his best drawings and pens and as she was older and stronger, Rosie took both her belongings and the case with the documents inside. It was a dead weight and she was forced to switch arms even before they’d walked a full kilometre.

‘We need a pram or a trolley,’ Rosie said. ‘Quite a few people died in the square – we might find one abandoned there.’