Geoffrey was alive. She sat, repeating it, like a mantra. Geoffrey is alive. Barbara’s questions swum in and out of focus. Dora had lost count of the days. Could have sworn it was March when Hoffmann had left, but perhaps it was earlier, in February.

She had to go to Geoffrey. She couldn’t waste a moment. She’d go to the travel agent first thing, book a ticket to Jersey.

Jersey

The sea stretched as far back as the horizon and crags of rock jutted from the sand, sharp as sharks’ teeth. When the tide was in, the waters looked calm and peaceful, belied the treachery beneath.

Green Island. That’s what the locals called this beach. The Germans had called it something else, but Dora couldn’t remember what. They’d cut it off with barbed-wire scrolls and mines, patrolled it night and day with dogs and short-haired soldiers. You’d never know that, looking at it now, Dora thought. Only if you’d lived through those times.

It didn’t seem as strange coming back as she thought it would be. The houses were newer, fresher, more suburban than she remembered, as if they’d burst free from the chrysalis of her memory to become something altogether different. Not quite a butterfly, Dora thought, they were too ordinary for that, too pebble-dash and dull. Unless it was a plain butterfly, for instance, or a common-or-garden moth, the sort that chomped through cardigans and carpets.

Out of the corner of her eye, Dora caught sight of double gates. She stopped the car, reversed. They were shut, chained and padlocked. Through their railings, Dora saw the gardens, overgrown and gone to seed. It had once been the beauty of the town with its promenade to the beach, its elegant terraces and well-tended beds, roses and begonias, hydrangeas and camellias, filled with the scents of jasmine and honeysuckle. That was how she knew, all that time ago. She’d recognised its perfumes. The building looked closed, unkempt, as if it had been shut for months, if not years.

Dora moved the car forward, turned left, and left again. The gardens at the rear were as unloved as those in the front and the back of the hotel was boarded up. There was a side gate, from memory, that led to the courtyard behind the kitchens. Dora parked the car, walked round the corner. It was still there. She tried the handle. The gate was unlocked, though it dragged on its hinges and was heavy. Dora levered it open wide enough to squeeze through, pushed it shut behind her. It had been padlocked from the inside, but someone had wrenched the lock free. Children, most likely. Dora entered the small yard. The hotel was to her left, the street wall behind. The outbuildings and the old coal bunkers made up the other two sides of the courtyard.