Aimee’s plaited hair was longer now and wrapped in a coil around her head. She wasn’t the wild, pigtailed child any longer. Colette Fletcher stood at the door of the farmhouse with a broad smile to welcome her daughter home.

‘What’s wrong, Maman? Is father sick with the gas on his lungs again?’

‘No, Aimee. It’s a surprise. You have a guest.’

The girl entered the warm kitchen and took off her coat. Her guest sat by the fireplace, opposite her father. He had grown so much in the five years since they’d said goodbye, she hardly knew him.

‘Hello, Marius,’ she said.

He rose to his feet and she saw he was taller than her father now. They shook hands, stiff and awkward. ‘You are still at school?’ he asked, speaking good French.

Aimee threw back her head and laughed. ‘Sort of. Master DuPont is getting too old so I help him with the teaching. He lives across the road from the school. He’d love to see you. Let’s go down before it gets dark.’

‘He saved our lives,’ Marius said. ‘A great man.’

As they hurried through the door Colette Fletcher called, ‘Don’t be too late, supper is in an hour. You’re welcome to stay, Marius.’

And they were gone. Master DuPont was frail now and his silver-topped cane was used for walking, not clubbing traitors to the ground. They sat around his fire and lived again those months before the Armistice. ‘And now, Marius?’

‘I am a student. In three years’ time I will be a doctor, I hope.’

Master DuPont and Aimee nodded. It was what they had hoped for too.

‘And you will work in Germany. How are things there?’

Marius’s face darkened in the flickering light of the fire. ‘The war is not over,’ he said quietly. ‘So many men came home and said we weren’t beaten by the enemy, we were beaten by traitors back at home. They say that in the next war we will root out the traitors and be stronger than ever.’

‘The next war?’ Aimee moaned. ‘No, no, no. What about the silver hand of peace we used to talk about?’

‘Not silver,’ Marius said. ‘No better than tin.’

‘We’ll be enemies again?’ the girl sighed.

Marius looked at her and smiled. ‘Enemies, never. When I am a doctor I am going to move to France to work. France needs doctors too.’

‘You’ll go to a great city like Paris or Rheims and make your fortune, I suppose,’ Aimee said.

‘No. I don’t want to work for silver. I want to help the people we hurt in the war. People like your father with his gas-wrecked lungs. I was thinking of setting up a practice in a small town in France.’

‘Which one?’

Mater DuPont said, ‘I think I know the name of the town.’