As Mrs Fletcher took the doctor across the yard to inspect the barn the boy looked shyly across at Aimee. ‘Ich bin Marius,’ he said.

Aimee shrugged. ‘Don’t speak German,’ she said sourly. ‘Only French, and English... and Latin.’

The boy’s eyes lit up in his small face. He spoke in Latin. ‘I loved Latin at school. I can speak to you in Latin.’

Aimee pinched her mouth tight and hissed through her teeth, ‘Why would I want to speak to you?’ then closed the farmhouse door.

April 1918: Bray

The days passed in a blur of danger and weariness. Aimee’s mother sent her on trips with broomstick messages to villages in the west. The German guards took little notice of a girl and never stopped her.

Mrs Fletcher groaned one evening as she sat with her daughter in the kitchen, sipping wine by the light of a smoky oil lamp. ‘We can count the soldiers and guns and tell the British how strong the Germans are in these parts. But I could tell them so much more if I only spoke German. There are all sorts of messages lying around the old school when I’m cleaning. I just don’t know which ones are important. It would be sad if I stole a cook’s order for bacon, only to get caught and shot.’

‘Don’t talk about getting shot,’ Aimee whispered. They both spoke softly though there was no one to listen and the sound of lorries rumbling up the lane to the hospital barn went on most of the night.

Mrs Fletcher looked up as another rolled past. ‘They move the wounded back to Germany by night. They don’t want the German people to see how many of their men have been broken.’

‘But the Germans are winning,’ Aimee argued. ‘They will be halfway to the Atlantic by now.’

‘No, they were stopped a week ago before they even got to Amiens,’ Mrs Fletcher said. ‘Their army moved forward too quickly. The food and the fuel, the aeroplanes and the guns, just couldn’t keep up.’

She paused as they heard a sound somewhere between a whistle and a scream. There was a flash of light followed by a boom. A shell exploded near the railhead as the British tried to destroy the enemy trains. ‘In 1914 – the last time the Germans were here – the British aimed at the railhead but managed to drop shells on the town. Let’s hope they are more careful this time.’

One lorry went past with a clanking sound as its wheels crushed the stones in the lane to powder. ‘Hear that?’ said Aimee’s mother. ‘Some German lorries are without tyres because they don’t have enough rubber. They are running out of everything.’