Something in his face changed, something slipped. I saw it in his tawny eyes. That sense of having your feet skid from under you on a sheet of ice. It would be so easy to reach out to him, so tempting to withdraw the verbal knife I had slid under his ribs, but I pinned my hands to my sides, kept my mouth shut, my eyes flat. He had to believe me, even if I didn’t believe myself.

For a long moment we glared at each other.

‘Who is trying to kill you?’ I asked. ‘Names.’

He gave the laziest of shrugs. ‘I might as well shoot myself.’ He smiled and put two fingers as a gun barrel to his temple. ‘It will make it easier for you all.’

I marched over to where his hunting rifle was propped in a corner of the room and picked it up. ‘If you don’t tell me some names right now, I’ll shoot you myself, André Caussade.’

He laughed. Where the hell did he dredge that up from?

‘I do believe you would.’

‘Sit down,’ I said.

He limped the few steps to the bed and sat down awkwardly on the patchwork cover that my mother had made. I replaced the rifle and sat myself in the chair beside the bed. I didn’t dare sit closer. I might remember that he was my brother.

‘Names,’ I said. ‘Give me names.’

He had withdrawn now, back behind his shell. Inspecting me. ‘Do you know how bad you look?’

I glanced at the blood and the burns. My sleeve was more holes than fabric and I could see shiny blisters underneath. My hair smelled like singed wool.

‘This is nothing,’ I said, ‘compared to what your friends will do to me, we both know that.’

‘You always did exaggerate.’ He tried a smile of sorts but it didn’t sit well. He leaned forward and took the fingers of my hand in his. ‘Go home, Eloïse, go back to Paris,’ he said quietly. ‘You are not wanted here. We can manage well without you.’

I removed my hand from his and rose to my feet so that I stood over him. ‘No, André, no, you can’t. From the neck down you are useless, you can do nothing to sort out this mess. You need me, you know you do. I can be your eyes and ears, I can be your . . .’ we both glanced down at the immaculate trousers of his funeral suit, ‘your legs. You need me,’ I whispered.

Saying the brutal words took all my strength.

I watched him die a little inside. Outside, the evening air was sultry and windless, and a pearly grey mist had crept on its belly from the fields, so that the light in the room was almost translucent.