Papa turned his head and spat on the straw. ‘The Communists are bastard traitors, ever y one of them. Driving this countr y to civil war. They’re in ever y workplace, in ever y factory, twisting the minds of fools till we are on the verge of a general strike and that wet rag of a prime minister Joseph Laniel has no idea how to prevent it tearing our countr y apart. They think they are the ones with the clever intellectual ideas when really they are all empty-headed puppets being made to dance to the tune of the violent puppet-masters in the Kremlin. How the evil bastards must be laughing to themselves and rubbing their hands. France will come crashing down while the Red Army is waiting just over the border. Do you think we fought a war against one dictator just to hand our countr y over to another? Do you?’

His words halted. But his rage didn’t. It had filled every corner of the barn. Even Cosette felt it. She was shifting from foot to foot and watching him with ears pricked and eyes wide, white eyelashes flicking anxiously.

I had never heard my father speak like that. He rarely said more than a dozen words to me. And never talked politics to me. For a full minute we watched each other, caught up inside our own heads.

‘Papa,’ I kept the word quiet, so that it would not snap the fragile thread between us, ‘do you know who this person is who is killing our animals?’

I could hear my heart thudding and thought it was his.

‘No,’ he said at last. And walked out of the barn.

*

When Mathilde trotted nimbly into the barn carrying a tray, I was filling up hay nets for Cosette and the four other injured horses that had joined us.

‘Voilà,’ Mathilde said cheerfully. ‘You’ll need this, chérie, and then you must take a bath. You look terrible.’

On the tray sat a plate of hot gardiane de taureau with a bottle of my father’s tart red wine and a glass. It was late afternoon and Mathilde should have been off to her own home long ago, but it was typical of her kindness to the Caussade family that she had remained to help.

‘Thank you,’ I said, and propped the tray on top of a barrel. ‘Any news?’

‘The police are still here, making a nuisance of themselves.’

‘So I hear.’

‘That Captain Roussel, as Léon now calls himself, questions everyone.’

‘Have you seen my brother?’

‘André? I think he’s in his room. I’ve not seen him but when I was in the kitchen I heard the poor lamb. On the stairs.’

We exchanged a look. Both of us knew the painful laborious sound she was referring to.