‘I’ve been asking around and everyone says the same, just that she was a headmistress with strong anti-American views. One old gossip smacked her toothless gums with pleasure in telling me that Madeleine Caron had an affair with Mayor Durand in their younger days, but that might just be the old crone sticking the knife in. It seems that Colonel Masson wanted some people like her to come to the open day because he had the messianic belief he could convert them.’

‘Such hubris would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. What about the others who were killed in the blast?’

‘Unlucky bastards.’

She reached into her bag, pulled out a silver hip-flask and unscrewed the top. She tipped it to her lips and took a long swig, before offering it to me.

‘Breakfast,’ she said. ‘Good for sore heads.’

I took the flask, drank and felt a small fire spring into life in my gut. Cognac.

‘Thanks. Now, one more favour, please?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘I can guess.’

*

The military hospital on Dumoulin Air Base was sterile. The building was newly constructed, white painted, perfectly clean and run with military precision. If I were sick, I mean really sick, I’d rather burrow into the warm straw in our barn next to Cosette and the rats than be pinned between pristine sheets in this soulless sterile USAF box. But I was grateful to them. When I saw Léon lying on his side swathed in bandages and bruises, I wanted to kneel down and kiss their shiny germ-free floor in thanks for taking good care of him.

‘Hello, Captain. How are you feeling?’

He opened his grey eyes. Bloodshot, I admit, but open and looking at me with the kind of expression that made me want to strip my clothes off and climb right in there with him. To wrap myself around him and hold him till his injuries were forgotten.

‘Oh, Eloïse,’ he said with an ache in his voice, ‘look at you.’

‘You’re not doing so good yourself,’ I said with a smile. It hurt to smile, so I kept it for when it was needed.

I kissed his unshaven cheek and then his lips, a gentle brush, but he wrapped an arm around me and pulled me to him. I buried my battered face in his neck and we stayed like that, breathing each other in, letting our skin grow together again. When a nurse came to re-dress the wounds on his back, Léon said, ‘Not now,’ in a tone that sent her scurrying further down the ward. She was accustomed to obeying the voice of authority. I sat down on the chair next to his bed, a stiff military seat not designed for comfort. He continued to lie on his side to ease any pressure on his back, but he held my hand as if he might slide down somewhere dark if he let go.