‘Did I give myself away, to you?’ said Leni lying back in the grass, one hand over her eyes.

‘How could you give yourself away to me? I didn’t know who you were except for your name, and that you’d been to Hamburg to see your grandmother. I didn’t think that you were totally uneducated. At the picnic you were marvellous. Confident. I suppose I thought that just a tiny bit odd. So socially aware.’

‘It’s been worrying here, to not make mistakes. In England it was not worrying. But here …’

‘Well, you can relax. There is nothing to fear.’

‘Except about Marcus. He likes this life too much. I don’t think he really wants to go back to what it was like before. Where we live: how we live. I don’t know.’

Cuckoo leant her back against the scaly tree, looked up into the leaves. ‘All this will fade as quickly as his suntan. You’ll see. In a week’s time he’ll be busy polishing up his Sheraton and Chippendale, or whatever do does in his shop.’

‘Desmond’s shop. Shops.’

‘Desmond. Beastly old Desmond, coming to take you away.’

Leni rolled over on her stomach, pulled a long stalk of grass between her fingers. ‘Perhaps if I could marry Marcus it would be better. Because than I would just be Mrs Pollock, and I would not feel so German. I hate to be German.’

‘How absurd,’ said Cuckoo. ‘Why?’

‘Because everyone hates us.’

‘Do they? I don’t. I don’t really hate anyone. Grottorosso perhaps. Him.’

‘Because of six million Jews, that terrible formula.’

‘Ah! that. And five million others. Not just the Jews. But that’s nothing to do with you, is it? You weren’t even born then, Not thought of.’

‘Even Bruna hates me.’

‘Nonsense. Absolute bunk. Bruna! My treasure?’

‘Yes. Not nonsense. Once when we went up to the hills for a picnic she told us such a pretty place; very calm, she said, and she showed Marcus on the map. A fine view, so peaceful. There was a little stone thing there. On it were four names and it said, “Shot By The Barbarous Enemy, June 1944”. And when we got back here she said did we see it? and Marcus said yes, and she said that they had had to change the word “Germans” to “Enemy” because it was peacetime now, but all French people would remember.’

‘Bruna had brothers in the Resistance; it is difficult, I admit. And the French have been occupied three times in about a hundred years, it is impossible to forget. 1940 is branded deeply on a great many hearts. It’s difficult for us to realize. But it is not your fault and not your responsibility, you have to grow beyond that. Learn from the past, live for the future.’