Hélène reached for her friend’s hands and, when she found that despite the heat of the day they were icy cold, gently chafed them between her own. She had not given any thought to what must have become of the infant corpse, but now she realised he must have had to be buried, and quickly, due to the summer heat.

‘They couldn’t not,’ she said softly. ‘Your Léon had to be laid to rest.’

‘The priest came and took him.’ Annette spoke with chilling anger.

‘He will have said prayers for him,’ Hélène said comfortingly. ‘He will have prayed for his soul, and your little Léon is now with his father, in heaven. They will both be looking down on you.’

‘His father!’ Annette gave a harsh laugh. ‘His father isn’t in heaven and never will be! If there is a God and he is just, Léon’s father will burn in hell for all eternity!’

Hélène let go of her hands and stared at her in astonishment. ‘But your husband…?’ she faltered.

‘Husband?’ cried Annette bitterly. ‘What husband? I never had a husband!’

‘But the baby’s father…’

‘I was raped,’ said Annette flatly. ‘A man forced himself on me. That’s rape and you know the man who did it.’

‘I do?’ Hélène was horrified. ‘I don’t know any men that you know.’

‘Father Thomas,’ stated Annette.

‘Father Thomas?’ echoed Hélène, incredulous. ‘You mean Father Thomas at the Clergy House?’

‘Where else?’

‘But he’s a priest!’

‘Doesn’t stop him raping young girls.’

‘But Father Lenoir? Madame Sauze?’

‘Father Lenoir died last year. Father Thomas stayed. He sent Madame Sauze away. When I was left alone in the house with him, he took me by force, coming to me in my bed at night. He could do as he chose… and he did.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Hélène said. ‘You’re telling me that you had no husband and that Father Thomas is the father of the baby?’

‘Yes.’

‘But how? I mean he’s a priest.’

‘He’s also a man; it takes a man and a woman to make a baby.’

Hélène knew that; she didn’t know the mechanics of exactly how, she had wondered about kissing, but she had always assumed that the couple must be married to achieve this miracle.

‘And Father Thomas made the baby… with you?’

‘Yes.’

The single word sat between them for several moments and then Hélène asked, ‘Does he know – about the baby, I mean?’

‘Of course! That’s why he was going to send me back to St Luke’s.’

‘St Luke’s?’ Hélène stared at her in horror.

‘You remember that at St Luke’s the nuns used to call us children of shame. That was because our parents, whoever they were, weren’t married, didn’t want us and dumped us on the orphanage doorstep. That’s what he was going to do to me. Tell them that I had been with some man and was now having a child of shame myself.’

‘But back to St Luke’s?’ gasped Hélène. ‘Oh, Annette, no!’