Lotti had never ridden a motorbike before, but she was too full of emotion to pay attention to how it felt. The war had barely touched Armande. Over the wide stone bridge they went where she had sometimes fished with Papa, past a waterside park where Mama had liked to walk. Skirting the quayside where Albert Skinner waited with his eyes on the river, they entered the town, zoomed past the covered market where Papa had once bought Lotti a secret éclair, round the main square with its Gothic cathedral where they came for Easter Mass, and with each familiar landmark Lotti held on a little tighter to Henri. On the corner of the square, Henri stopped a cab and ordered the driver to fetch the others, and then the motorbike began to climb up, up through steep cobbled streets toward the clifftops, and Lotti couldn’t breathe but clung to Henri as though to a life raft.

Moune’s house was the last at the end of a pleasant tree-lined street, separated from the road by a stone courtyard full of roses, just as Lotti remembered, with a shady garden at the back. Henri stopped by the side of the road and Lotti climbed down. She was shaking, but it had nothing to do with the motorbike ride.

That everything here should still exist as if nothing had changed!

“What if she won’t see me?” she whispered to Henri.

“Why shouldn’t she see you?” he replied.

“But what if she’s not happy to see me? What if she’s angry? What if she sends me back?”

“Then you’ll be no worse than you are now, will you?” he reasoned. “Come on, Lotti. You’ve made it this far; you’re not going to give up now. It can’t be worse than that storm on the Channel.”

Gently but firmly, he took her by the shoulders and turned her toward the house.

“You’re right,” said Lotti. “I’ll do it quickly, before I lose my nerve.”

“Want me to come with you?”

“No, it’s all right. I’ll do it on my own.”

Lotti took a deep breath, then, ignoring her jelly legs, walked fast across the courtyard to the house. The front door had been painted green, which was new, but the knocker in the shape of a lion’s head, which had delighted her as a child, was still there. Lotti grasped it, breathed again, then rapped three times.

A stern, middle-aged woman in a housekeeper’s dress and apron answered the door.

“Yes?”

Lotti’s heart sank. The housekeeper was looking at her exactly the same way the waiter at the café in Buisseau had, like she was some sort of street urchin. Too late, she wondered if she should have changed her clothes.