He watched her mouth form her younger brother’s name, as if she were biting on a tooth that hurt. He pulled a sheet of paper from a drawer and spread it in front of her.

‘I’d like you to read through this list of names of attendees at the burial ceremony and tell me which ones you know. Or, more to the point, which ones you don’t know.’

‘Shouldn’t you be asking my father this?’

‘I have already done so.’

She cocked her head at him. Exactly like when she was twelve. ‘Covering all angles?’

‘Looking for holes,’ he said.

He handed her a pen. She started skimming through them, ticking the ones she knew with rapid little flicks of the nib. At one point she glanced up at him and found him watching her, but it was when she paused a second time, her forehead wrinkled in an effort of recall, that he smelled a scrap of something meaty. He was about to ask which name had niggled at her, but the door burst open without the customary knock and the moment was lost.

‘Can’t you see, Travert, that I am busy?’

‘Captain, all bloody hell is about to break loose.’

Travert was his sergeant, a man with a penchant for languidness. Not one to panic, not unless he had to, and right now, his cheeks were an odd florid colour. Léon rose to his feet.

‘Excuse me a moment, Eloïse.’

But before he could exit the office, Travert started to spill the emergency news.

‘They’re coming. In coaches,’ he blurted out. ‘Coming here. To demonstrate in Serriac against the air base. Hundreds of the Commie trade union bastards being shipped here, maybe thousands. They’re on their way right now, charging up from the coast and Marseille. They’ve reached Saint-Martin-de-Crau already and—’

‘Enough! Silence, Travert.’

Léon rushed to the door and yelled down the hallway, ‘Get me Monsieur le Maire on the phone. Now!’ He swung back inside the room. ‘Travert, see Mademoiselle Caussade out.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The town of Serriac was choking. Crowded. Cracking at the seams. Shouts and anti-nuclear placards and raised fists disrupted the sleepy air that was accustomed to nothing more than the barking of dogs and the jangled notes of toothless old Fabron’s accordion.

‘Americans out!’

‘Hiroshima never again!’

‘No to nuclear weapons.’

‘Yanks go home!’

‘No USA air base here!’

I felt the hatred growing, as uncontrollable and as destructive as the fire in my father’s stables. I feared for my town. I saw a woman with a baby strapped to her chest and she was brandishing a placard that stated in blood-red paint: I WANT A FUTURE FOR MY CHILD . I feared for her child.