Some days, when Dora thought she wouldn’t get pregnant, they made love in the afternoon, his eyes as soft and creamy as the surf below. Lying spooned in the late sun, his arms holding her tight, she felt his breath mingle with her own, his muscles tighten against hers, his skin and hers, smooth together. Those days, she forgot.

Other times, she’d crouch beside a gaunt and wasted figure and lance an abscess, or wash a wound, hand on a brow, there, there, as the planes droned overhead, or dynamite thundered in the tunnels and the ground vibrated.

It was Wednesday in late June. It was a long haul up the Grande Route de Rozel, feet pressing hard on the pedals and the makeshift rubber hose tyres sticking to the road. Dora was hot and thirsty when she arrived. The iron shoe-scraper was to the left of the front door, their signal that someone else was inside, and the front door was locked. Dora made sure no one had followed her, walked to the back of the house, fished the key from under the flowerpot, opened the scullery door, locked it behind her and went through, into the kitchen. She dreaded the days when there were people there, never knew what she would find, never knew whether she, too, like her father in Verdun, would feel the drag of death.

The kitchen was empty. She walked through the hall, the grandfather clock with its steady, homely tock-tock, so normal, up the stairs, along the landing, steep steps to the attic.

‘Who’s there?’ Geoffrey lurched from behind the screen.

‘Me,’ Dora said. She walked towards him. There were two escapees this time. One was a young man. Her age, perhaps, wizened with hunger, his face lined and wrinkled. The other was a boy, with emaciated legs and a face no more than a skull. They sat on the mattress, elbows on knees, dying hawks with jagged broken wings. ‘Are they injured?’ Dora said.

Geoffrey shook his head. ‘Only their spirits.’ Smiled.

But she smelled it. ‘You’ve been drinking,’ she said.

She saw him swallow, his Adam’s apple move as it pushed down the spit, like a guilty schoolboy. He put his hands to his temples.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes. I’ve had a glass of brandy.’

Brandy? Where did he get brandy from?

‘I thought these two poor sods could do with it.’

‘You gave it to them?’ Dora said, unable to conceal her shock. ‘Are you mad? That could kill them.’

He just looked at her. ‘Why shouldn’t they have a drop?’

Sometimes, Doralein, we gave them brandy in Verdun. There was nothing more to be done.

‘Come,’ she said. ‘Let’s go downstairs. I’ll make something hot for us all.’