Dora had to cut across country these days, avoid the main routes where the soldiers milled and marched. Her bicycle was second-hand, a heavy machine, and it was hard going up the hills. Scabius and cornflower flickered in the hedgerows and Dora stopped to pick them, threading them through the band of her hat. She looked around. The last of the bluebells hovered in a wood across a nearby field. Dora pushed her bike through the gate, propped it against the hedge out of view in case a passer-by took a fancy to it. That happened now, people stealing bikes, and replacements were like gold dust and as expensive. Thirty pounds. Thirty. She set out towards the wood. A posy, for the table. A small gift for Geoffrey. The least I could do. She entered the wood, bent down to pick the flowers, snap the stems without pulling the bulb.

‘Fräulein. Bitte.’

Dora froze.

‘Was–’ She stopped herself in time. Was wollen Sie? Caught off guard, so easy to slip into German. She looked around, could see no one.

‘Bitte.’

There was a hawthorn bush, its blossoms spent and brown, its leaves in full furl. A shape moved behind it and a man crept out. His hair was matted and unkempt, his face grubby and unshaven. A German soldier, his uniform soiled and crumpled. He looked like a tramp, a rough sleeper. He held his cap in his hand, fingered and wrung it as the dying might clutch and twist their bedclothes.

‘Gibt’s was zu essen?’ He pointed to his mouth with one hand.

Dora dropped the flowers and ran. As she neared the road, she saw the search party, two jeeps, the Kübelwagen. Eight Geheime Feldpolizisten, secret policemen, jumped down, pistols in their holsters, rifles in their hands. They pushed open the gate and ran towards the wood. One spotted her, stopped, came towards her, cupped his hand round her chin and shoved her against the hedgerow.

‘Was tun Sie hier?’ He sneered, as if Dora was a child, or a dog. Dora shook her head. He had smoked a cigarette, his breath stale and fusty. ‘What are you doing here?’ His English faltered. ‘Vat are you doing? Who have you been with?’

He twisted her head, left, right, fingers pressing hard, the skin coarse.

‘No one. I was picking flowers.’

‘Let me see.’

‘I dropped them,’ she said. What if they took her in? Questioned her? The soldier was a fugitive, she realised now, a deserter. He’d be shot. If they thought she’d helped him, they’d shoot her too. People had been killed for much less.

‘I heard a noise,’ she added. ‘It gave me a fright.’