The secrets of the US air base laid out like cherries for me to pick.

They flashed bright as fireworks in my head.

Slowly, precisely, my hands screwed the drum anticlockwise down into the black tank.

Papa and Father Jerome in grainy black-and-white. Young soldiers.

Always another war. A Cold War now.

I thought about what that meant for my family as I picked up the bottle of developing liquid, poured it through a hole in the top and agitated it gently with the thermometer.

Fifty-three bodies in a barn.

What terrible deeds did a war make you do? I thought of the gun in my bag today. What was I capable of to help my country?

To protect my family.

My hands knew what they were doing, even if I didn’t. They pumped, they emptied, they washed the film again and again with clean water inside the tank to rid it of all trace of film emulsion.

The placards in the street. A ravenous creature with a thousand legs.

Pouring in fixer. Waiting. Waiting. And while I’m waiting, voices fill my head.

Out! Out! Out!

An iron bar.

Mickey, poor tragic Mickey. You were here to help protect us.

My fingers poured in the wetting agent to prevent drying streaks, while words rose to the surface of my mind like bubbles that had been trapped in my developing tank. Words I’d heard years ago in the mouth of Father Jerome.

‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’

My hand removed the cassette. Unspooled it. Hung the negative up to dry.

Mickey asleep on the wet flagstones with a circular crimson stain like a target drawn on his back.

Léon on his knees. My wet head resting on his shoulder.

Was the knife blade meant for me?

The fireworks in my brain abruptly blacked out. All I saw now was the blood on my dress, and I seized its hem, tore it over my head and threw it in a corner.

There was more to Father Jerome’s New Testament quotation that echoed quietly like a distant church bell.

‘Resist not evil.’

*

I dialled a Paris number. Let it ring twice, hung up and dialled again. That way she would know it was me.

‘Chérie!’ It was like a gust of Parisian smoke in my ear. ‘I was going to ring you this evening.’

Clarisse’s silky voice blunted a sharp edge within me. It sounded so real and ordinary that it made me smile, though she couldn’t see it. Never did I think I would ever call my boss ordinary.

‘Any news on Gilles Bertin?’ I asked.

‘Some.’

‘Good or bad?’

‘A mix.’

‘Stop sitting on the fence.’