I have some news that you might like to hear. We arrived in Paris as planned and, after a couple of nights in a rather drab hotel, I managed to secure a short lease on a pleasant apartment in Montparnasse (see address). My intention is to see if I can find any employment in the local hospitals or perhaps as a locum. I am not sure how things work in France, but I believe I have enough of the language to see me through. Also, looking at schools for Jerzy (again, not totally sure of the French system).

Anyway, back to the news. When we were settled in our new home, I took the liberty of leaving Jerzy with Lilly, telling them I had to visit old friends in the country and would be back in two or three days. I rented a car, found some black market petrol at an exhorbitant price and headed for Normandy, to the village of Ste-Estelle-sur-Seine. This was Lilly’s home village. Without alarming her, I wanted to establish the situation there, and whether there would be any hope of reconciliation between her and her family and the other villagers. Time, of course, can sometimes heal.

It turned out that a great deal has changed. In particular, her father (the local blacksmith) had taken his life during the summer, hanging himself from the rafters in his smithy. Whether it was guilt over his treatment of his daughter I have no idea.

Her mother was not unhappy to see me and talk to me. She had clearly been under the thumb of her husband and I rather think she was glad to see the back of him. She was very keen to learn about Lilly and seemed terribly guilty for what had happened to her.

Did she think the village would accept Lilly back? She wasn’t sure. One of their number had been taken hostage by the Germans during the war and had been shot in reprisal when the Resistance attacked a Wehrmacht patrol just before D-Day. So there is still bad feeling.

I did, however, learn something else from Lilly’s mother. It seems her baby, Nathalie, was not killed (as she had believed), but was placed with the nuns in a convent near Rouen. And this is where the news comes in. To cut a long story short, I drove to the convent and discovered that the baby was, indeed, there – and was thriving.

The nuns seemed reluctant to part with the child. They don’t approve of children being brought up by young single mothers. But I know a bit about the way the world works, so I made an offer of a fair-sized donation to their funds and suddenly they were all sweetness and light. ‘Of course, little Nathalie must be returned to her true mother. Would Madame Gray wish to take her now, or will the mother come to collect her?’