‘And are you one of the White Lady group? Are you a spy?’ Aimee breathed. She had read stories about spies but in her mind they were men dressed in black, creeping through night-dark woods.

‘In every village there are men and women waiting to serve our armies. If the Germans come to Bray, I’ll report it to the British – I’ll count how many troops and guns the enemy has. I’ll report on where the soldiers are staying... where their railway lines are laid and what fields they are using to land their aircraft.’

Aimee’s mouth went dry. ‘The Germans would shoot you if they ever caught you doing that.’

Mrs Fletcher spread her hands. ‘I’ll just have to make sure I’m not caught then. The radio is well hidden in the barn.’

‘I’ve never seen you talking on a radio,’ Aimee said.

‘I do it at midnight when you’re asleep. The villages to the east have been reporting on the new enemy attacks. The Germans call it Operation Michael.’

Aimee’s eyes brightened. ‘That’s how you knew they were on their way before anyone else in the village?’

Her mother nodded. ‘Your father is fighting with rifles and bombs. I will fight using my eyes and ears.’

‘And me?’

‘You can go to Amiens, if you like. You have cousins there who’d take you in. You’d be safe there.’

Aimee had met her older cousins before the war. They treated her like a maid-servant and called her ‘stupid peasant’.

‘I want to stay,’ she said.

Colette Fletcher grinned. ‘And I want you to stay. The enemy would never think a schoolgirl could be carrying secret messages.’

‘You’d let me carry messages for you?’ A shadow crossed Aimee’s face. ‘If they caught me I would never betray you.’

‘You wouldn’t have to,’ her mother said. She picked up a broom from the corner of the room. ‘This is a magic broom.’

Aimee looked cross. ‘Don’t be silly. Magic is for fairy tales.’

‘Maybe. But this broom holds a secret message that may help us win the war.’

Aimee frowned and picked it up. ‘It’s a broom,’ she said. ‘Stop teasing me, Maman.’

The girl had left the door of the kitchen open. A man’s voice said, ‘It is the broom of a White Lady.’ And Aimee thought her heart had stopped.

21 March 1918: East of Peronne, Northern France

Marius Furst had walked eight weary kilometres before he came across a canteen at the side of the road. It was well away from the smoke-fogged street of houses. The ruined buildings had broken windows and cracking walls. They trembled with the roar of the guns. The boy joined a line of soldiers grumbling as they waited for the thin soup and black bread.