‘I want to visit my baby,’ Annette announced without preamble. ‘Miss Hélène and I are going to the churchyard.’

‘Annette,’ said Estelle calmly, ‘you must certainly visit your baby’s grave, but not today. You’re not strong enough yet.’

‘Today.’ Annette spoke firmly. ‘While Miss Hélène is here.’ But when she bent down to put on her shoes, her head began to spin and she sat up again quickly, her face ashen.

‘Annette, my dear girl,’ Agathe stepped in to prevent an argument, ‘I’ll come and visit you again tomorrow and together we will go to the churchyard. Madame Leclerc is right, today is too soon. You have to rebuild your strength. Tomorrow or the next day.’

Although the wheels in her head were spinning more slowly, Annette knew that she was right, but she said belligerently, ‘All right. Tomorrow.’

‘I’ll come too,’ Hélène said. ‘We can all go together.’

Good as their word, the next afternoon Agathe and Hélène returned to Madame Leclerc’s and found Annette waiting for them, dressed and ready to go out. Pierre had again brought them into the village in the chaise.

‘I want you to come with us today,’ Agathe had told him. ‘We’re going to the churchyard with Annette, but in case she finds it too far to walk, or too…’ She didn’t explain, but she didn’t have to. Pierre agreed at once, and leaving the carriage in the inn yard, they collected Annette and took the lane to the church.

The tiny grave, no more than a broken patch of earth in the shade of the eastern wall, had nothing to mark it as a place of burial, or to name the child who lay beneath the ground. Annette stared down at it, silent tears on her cheeks. In her hands was a posy of flowers that Hélène had brought from the garden at Belair.

Agathe and Hélène stood back as Annette moved forward with the flowers in her hands. Both Hélène and Agathe found tears in their own eyes as they watched her bend and lay the nosegay on the tiny grave, and Pierre, watching from a discreet distance, once again admired her courage.

At that moment Father Bernard emerged from the church and, seeing the little group beyond the wall, walked over to speak to them. He paused as Annette stood in silence at the graveside of her son, the flowers at her feet, but as at length she turned away he stepped forward.

‘God bless you, my child,’ he said softly. ‘Your baby is with God in heaven now.’

Annette stared at him for a moment, her eyes filled with an emotion so violent that the old man took a step backwards.

‘God?’ she said, her voice full of contempt. ‘God doesn’t exist, and even if he does, I don’t believe in him!’ She turned her back on the priest and moved away.

‘I can see you don’t,’ replied Father Bernard, ‘but that doesn’t matter. He believes in you.’

‘And I am not your child!’ She threw the comment over her shoulder and set off unsteadily down the hill towards the lane below.