‘It’s all the physical activity.’ He’d smiled and kissed my mouth. ‘You taste and feel more like a Camargue girl again.’ He took a gentle bite of my good cheek as though eating an apple straight off the tree.

But I liked it. I liked feeling my arms stronger and my legs more muscular. It made me feel safer.

‘Don’t go to the air base on Saturday,’ he said.

I leaned my head on his shoulder and lifted his hand to kiss its palm. It was warm and robust under the touch of my lips and smelled of ink. I didn’t want to argue. We had little time.

Each day, late in the evening, Léon turned up at Mas Caussade under cover of darkness. A dark shadow in the night and each time my heart stopped. I had not expected this. This pain when we were apart. This sense of something tearing inside me when he left. He didn’t drive out to the farm, he walked the five miles, or rather, ran, so that there would be no sound of a car for someone to track. I waited for him in the barn with Cosette and each time the heat of him engulfed me.

‘Don’t go to the air base,’ he said again. But he knew me too well. ‘I’m trying to protect you.’

‘I know.’

‘So why do you make it so . . .’

‘Difficult?’

‘Yes. So damn difficult. We aren’t talking about breaking a limb or grazing a knee falling from a tree. We are talking about a knife in the back or a bullet in the throat. Take care. Oh, my love, take care.’

We did not know then. About the bullet that was about to strike. Just when I thought I was safe.

*

I had laid down rules for myself. To do as Léon asked, to take care. My mistake – my fatal mistake – lay in ignoring one of them. It was Friday morning and the clouds had drifted in, obscuring the sun. They were ragged and untidy, as if someone had tried to shred them the way Bertin and Piquet shredded my nerves. My rule was – never stand still outdoors. Don’t give them an easy target. A simple rule that can save your life the way not stepping off a cliff is a simple rule that can save your life. Easy to put into practice.