If the truth were to be told, Joe knew he would feel happier if Geoffrey slept there. He was becoming more unsteady, as if his deafness had taken a turn for the worse and disrupted his balance. He was forgetful, too, confused. He’d called Joe ‘Pierre’ the other day, had put his reading glasses in the fridge. His bad leg was now stiff with arthritis and the doctor said it put wear and tear on his other joints, that he should have a new hip in due course, a new knee.

‘Spare parts,’ Joe said. ‘You’ll keep running forever.’

‘I’m not a car,’ Geoffrey said. His face had clouded and his eyes grew watery. ‘I just want to run long enough for Dora. Not forever.’

Joe could hear him snoring in the room above. He should go out, take the bike for a spin. Why not search for the old labour camps, buried now under golf courses and luxury flats? Lay a wreath, perhaps. Make atonement. If they were to ask him what he’d done with his life, he could say, I honoured the dead and paid for my sins.

Joe could hear a car change gears, begin the descent to the farm. A cheap rented car. That woman. Joe braced himself. She’d ask him about Trude this time. He didn’t want to set that memory free, but it had already escaped. Joe may have lived like an imposter, a quack priest peddling forgiveness and hope, but he’d never lied outright in his life, couldn’t start now. He’d have to tell the truth. Besides, she might have news about Dora, and that was important for Geoffrey.

He pushed back his chair and went outside. She’d parked in front of the house, was walking up to the front door.

‘Come round the back,’ he said ‘We stopped using that door after the war.’ He and Geoffrey had not spoken about it, but they couldn’t cross that threshold again, not after the lad had been shot. Joe swept it from time to time, kept it clear, Weedol between the cracks of the paving stones, but they never walked across it, not to go in and out of the house. She was wearing jeans, with a red blouse and white jacket. Joe had always thought it strange that jeans were fashionable, but the young woman looked good in hers, and as she rounded the corner of the house, the sun glinted on her black hair, turned it red. It did that, he knew, made ravens blue, crows green, blackbirds amber, depending on the angle of the sun and the time of year. Black was the richest colour he knew.

He opened the door, stood back as she entered the kitchen.

‘It’s warm in here,’ she said.

‘Well, see, it’s the Aga,’ he said. ‘We keep it going all year.’