‘It was in the filthy winter at the end of the battle of the Somme in northern France where there was mud in our boots, mud on our teeth, mud in our souls. Jerome and I had got separated from our company one night. We found ourselves on the edge of a village, just a pile of burnt-out ruins, but there was a stone barn still standing. It was full of Boche soldiers in German grey, asleep in the hay, even the guard. Jerome and I shot them all. Fifty-three of them. We counted each one.’

Papa was breathing heavily, mouth open to drag in air. I listened to him in silence, imagining the rifle hot in his hands.

‘We were kids,’ he said. ‘Barely seventeen. We’d watched all our friends slaughtered at our sides, brains or guts blown into the mud by German guns and bombs. When we started shooting in the barn, we couldn’t stop. Our fingers kept pulling the trigger, and then we hurled grenades. The smell was terrible.’

He halted, shook his head and looked at me as if he’d never seen me before.

‘Somehow Charles Durand got his hands on a cutting from a local newspaper up there. He has been using it for years to blackmail me.’

‘Why would anyone blackmail you for shooting the enemy?’

‘They weren’t the enemy. The bastard Germans had dressed up a bunch of their French prisoners in German army uniforms to make us think that they had more troops in that area.’

My heart tightened for him. ‘They were French?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, Papa, how terrible. For you and for Father Jerome. No wonder he turned to the church to find forgiveness.’

He turned his back to me. He rested his hands heavily on the ancient sideboard, still clutching the piece of newspaper between his fingers, and hung his head, reminding me so much of a wounded bull in the arena. ‘Jerome was lucky,’ he muttered. ‘Forgiveness is not easy to come by.’

I moved closer. ‘I know,’ I said softly.

‘Fifty-three Frenchmen’s lives.’ He stared down at his hands, at his thick-knuckled fingers and the thin gold wedding band as though seeing blood on them.

‘It wasn’t your fault, Papa.’

‘Of course it was my fault. Just like André’s injuries are your fault. Facts don’t change just because we wish them to.’

‘I know,’ I said again.

He uttered a guttural sigh, his hefty ribs rising and falling again and again, and said, ‘I’ve never told anyone. Not even your mother. Jerome and I never speak of it. It is my own cross to bear.’

I put out a hand and touched his back, rested my palm gently on his muscular shoulder blade, offering a scrap of comfort. I wanted, this one time, for him to accept my love and not spurn it. Just this once. He didn’t move, didn’t pull away.