‘I wasn’t a whore, you know, before I came here,’ Agnes went on. ‘And when I leave, if I’m spared, and I will be spared, I’ll see to that, I won’t be one either.’

‘Your husband?’ Dora said. ‘Couldn’t he help?’

Agnes smiled, a crooked twist of her mouth. ‘I didn’t say I was an angel,’ she said.

‘Why France?’

‘Himmler’s opened this new facility, in Lamorlaye. Lebensborn. Mother and baby home. Mainly baby. And not for mothers like you.’

‘Or you?’

‘Certainly not for me,’ Agnes said. ‘They brought me here. July 1940.’ She opened the photograph, closed it again. ‘I saw what the set-up was here and I said to myself, I said, I can play them at their game. Because I will survive. Sometimes, looks pay.’ She threw back her head and roared with laughter. ‘Who’d want to screw me? I made sure they made me a Kapo. Keep on their right side, I said to myself. Keep alive. Because as soon as this war is over, so help me God, I’m out of here and searching for Emile.’

Dora had never liked the woman, but she’d never tried to find out about her, either. Bitter men, her father used to say, have drunk poison. She believed Agnes. But List? She wasn’t sure that fitted.

‘Nurse Hoffmann,’ Dora said.

‘What about her?’ Agnes said. ‘In it up to her neck.’

‘And List?’

Agnes laughed, a genuine mirth, a rumble from the deep. ‘You’re bloody thick, you are,’ she said. ‘She’s totally infatuated with him. Would kill you happily to get at him. She wants that baby. Her gift to him, if you like.’

Dora thought of their last conversation with Hoffmann. Sly, treacherous. Even if Agnes was wrong about List, she knew she was right about Nurse Hoffmann.

‘What can I do?’ Dora said.

‘You’re the nurse,’ Agnes said. ‘You’ll know what to do, when the time comes.’

She folded the photograph again and tucked it into her pocket, climbed off the bench, lifted her bowl and wiped it with the hem of her shift.

Chapter Sixteen: Joe

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

JOE

Jersey: June 1985

Geoffrey was resting. He’d taken to having a nap of late, climbing the stairs and lying down under the eiderdown. Joe had offered to bring his bed downstairs.

‘We never use the front room,’ he said. ‘Why not make it into your bedroom? You’d have the bathroom on the same level.’