I opened my eyes a crack and took a squint at a thin slice of a hospital ward with a woman in the bed opposite mine reading a letter and chuckling to herself. My eyes travelled from her bandaged head to the white plaster on my left arm. I blinked with surprise and belatedly became aware of pain punching on every heartbeat. But alongside the pain came memory. It slunk back in like a thief and I was gripped by an overwhelming terror for my brother.

I had turned right, when André said, ‘Turn left.’

I had opened the garage door when André asked, ‘Is that wise?’

The whiteness in my head was not fog. It was guilt.

*

I forced myself out of my hospital bed.

I shuffled and I stared at my feet in slippers I’d never seen before. Every ten paces I leaned against the wall and I couldn’t work out whether the swaying was the wall or me. The hospital corridor stretched ahead, shiny and impossibly long. Too full of light. My eyes hurt. I pushed myself off the wall and jerked one foot forward. The strange slipper came with it.

‘What on earth are you doing here, mademoiselle?’

‘I’m looking for my brother.’ My words stuck to each other.

‘You should be in bed, my dear.’

The voice sounded kind. She was a blur of white, one of the nursing nuns, and I forced my gaze into focus on her. She was looking at me with soft grey eyes, creased with concern. ‘What is your brother’s name?’

‘André Caussade,’ I said. ‘I need to know is he . . . ?’

Alive? Is he? Is he alive? I couldn’t say it.

She tucked her arm under mine to give me support and set off down the corridor at an urgent pace.

*

The figure in the grey metal hospital bed looked dead. He didn’t need me. He needed a miracle.

Who is this person lying so still on the bed, he does not look like my brother? Face bruised, features blackened, swollen and distorted. Nose smashed. Swaddled in bandages. The metal-cage contraption over his legs scared me. It was hidden under blankets but my heart churned in my chest each time I looked at the small mountain it created.

‘André,’ I called softly. ‘Can you hear me?’

No response. Not a flicker from his sandy eyelashes. I hadn’t kept him safe.

The hospital ward was not unpleasant, long, white, bloodless and busy, but it brought bile to my throat because under the lingering crisp aroma of disinfectant, it smelled the way our barns smelled the year our bulls got the fever. Of meat going bad while still on the hoof.

‘André, stay with me,’ I whispered to him.