I nodded. ‘We both have our reasons.’ I tickled Cosette’s chin and she batted her long white eyelashes at me. I stepped back and focused on the policeman in the forbiddingly dark uniform. It seemed to have swallowed him. Devoured him. The bold young boy I used to know was gone. Grey eyes still clear and alert, still on the lookout for trouble, but where was the fizzing grin with teeth too large for his mouth? And the honking laugh? Now was not the time or place for either of them, I admit, but even so, I missed them. The strong features of his face were clothed in stillness and a seriousness that felt alien. I wondered whether he pulled them on with the dark-blue serge uniform each morning, or whether they were imprinted permanently on his skin like a tattoo.

‘Please tell me,’ I said, ‘the reason for what’s going on here.’

‘You should ask your father.’

‘I’m asking you.’

The lines of his face sharpened. ‘Why not your father?’

‘My father may choose not to tell me.’

He did not challenge that.

As the last rays of the sun slipped through the doorway and painted a dusty golden rectangle on the cobbles of the stables, I walked over to the windowsill where a riot of small rosy apples overflowed a reed basket. I took three, one for each of us. Cosette whickered her thanks prettily.

Léon took a bite of his. ‘I’ve come to ask questions, Mademoiselle Caussade,’ he said formally, ‘not to answer them.’ But he smiled. A genuine one, not a polite one, and for the first time that day I felt the tight band around my chest loosen enough for me to breathe freely.

‘There’s no point asking me anything,’ I pointed out. ‘I know nothing about the killing of Goliath. I came because my father asked me to but I don’t have any idea what is going on here.’

‘You know about the American plan to construct eleven air bases in France?’

‘Of course. There have been mass protests in Paris against the idea.’

‘The United States Air Force – USAF – as part of NATO, is putting together a defence strategy against the threat from the Soviet Union’s build-up of forces.’

‘But I thought the air base sites were all going to be on France’s north-eastern border, not down here in the south. Why us?’

‘They are proposing for this one to be a back-up base. They’ve taken over Dumoulin airfield and have expanded it. But now they want to extend the runways much further and that’s why they need your father’s land.’

‘So the new runways will be . . .’ I couldn’t finish.

Léon frowned and waited for me to complete the sentence. I didn’t. So finally he voiced the words himself. ‘Right next to your father’s manade on its western edge.’