Her boots were in the corner, but she didn’t wait to put them on. Instead she opened the back door onto the paved yard between the house and the smithy where her father worked.

The first faint winter light was just beginning to emerge across the icy field that bordered the yard on the east side. Two electric wall lights added a cold glow to the mud-streaked cobblestones.

Papa was there, in the centre of the yard, standing with his hands on his hips, legs astride as if he had been waiting all night for her. He wore his sleeveless leather jerkin, his muscular blacksmith’s arms bare despite the cold. Those huge muscles that had once seemed so safe and protective now felt alien and threatening. Nor was her father alone. Thirty or more men clustered around him, as well as a few women. She knew them all; they were all residents of the commune. She had known them all her life. Some of them had been her school friends. She felt faint and nauseous. She thought she was going to be sick. There was still no sign of Nathalie.

The man at her father’s right side took a step forward. He was the mayor, Jean Étienne.

‘Lilly Marais,’ he said. ‘You have been tried by the people of Ste-Estelle-sur-Seine and found guilty of the crime of treason and unlawful congress with the enemy, against the state of France and the good name of this commune.’

‘Where is my daughter? Where is Nathalie?’ She saw her father glancing across the courtyard. What was he looking at? Oh God, where was her baby? Why was he looking at the well?

Lilly Marais was twenty. She knew that she was beautiful; with her flaxen hair and clear skin. She was the fairest maid in all Ste-Estelle-sur-Seine, perhaps the whole of Normandy. She had always attracted the most attention from the boys in her year and even the older ones. More than that, many had commented on her sweet nature, even the other girls and women, and she had enjoyed popularity both in school and the wider community.

They had still seemed to love her when she met the dashing German officer. Julius had charmed her, taken her dancing in the officers’ mess and to good restaurants in Rouen, given her a gold necklace. He had made sure that she never went hungry, by providing her with wonderful foodstuffs, most of which she had passed on to her family and neighbours. They had been happy enough to accept her largesse, and smilingly called her German lover ‘the generous one’. No one had insulted her. Not to her face at least.

But that was then, and this was now. The Germans had been driven from France by the Americans and British, and her lover was gone.

How quickly the worm turned.

Now she was scorned openly. No one in the commune spoke to her, not even her father, the blacksmith. Only Mama showed her any affection, but that was done discreetly when Papa was not around.