“S’il vous plaît,” she asked one of the porters when he stopped for a cigarette. “Regardez! Avez-vous vu cet homme?’

Please, look! Have you seen this man?

It was not the first time the porter had been asked this question, in this manner. He had never yet recognized a face, but nonetheless he took the photograph and examined it. Called over his colleagues, who also looked. Handed it back, as he always did, with a sorrowful shake of the head.

“Non, désolé.’

I’m sorry, no.

Nurses, kitchen staff, doctors, orderlies. Cleaners, ambulance drivers, even patients. Lotti moved to the main entrance and showed the photograph to every person who passed.

Mainly, she drew blank looks. Sometimes, a sorrowful shake of the head. Once, a hug.

But nobody recognized the photograph.

The morning passed. Lotti came in to take Ben’s place so he could go outside to stretch and use the bathroom. He came back and ate his sandwiches. He closed his eyes and found that by focusing really hard on his breathing, he could slow down his heart and pretend he wasn’t there. In out in out. He opened his eyes and saw that the afternoon sun cast long shadows across the floor, and thought with a fierce longing of the Sparrowhawk.

Lotti came in from outside, looking exhausted. Most of the chairs were free now, but Ben still sat on the floor. Lotti flopped down beside him.

“Nothing?” he asked wearily.

“Nothing.”

Four o’clock came, and the records office closed at five. They began to lose hope of ever being called, but then …

“Numéro soixante-trois!’

Number sixty-three!

They jumped up, with their hearts in their mouth.

Their turn had come.

“It will be difficult, at the hospital,” Sister Angèle had told them before they left the mission house. “You will see things, what war does to people.”

Lotti had replied, “But we have seen that already, all the time, everywhere. The servicemen at home who came back from the war with bits missing, Captain de Beauchesne who lost his eye. And we have seen the villages which were destroyed, and the farmhouse, and the cemetery with thousands of graves.”

“The hospital will be worse,” said Sister Angèle.

The door to the ward opposite the record-keeper’s office had been wedged open to create a draught. And in the end, the record-keeper had to repeat himself twice before either Ben or Lotti heard what he said.

Afterward, they walked out of the hospital into the hot still afternoon, gripping each other’s hands. Sam was not at the hospital, and the register held no record of him, but this was not the reason they held on so tight.

Sister Angèle had been right.

What they saw on that ward was much, much worse than anything they had seen before.

Chapter Thirty

Albert Skinner was in Calais, interviewing customs officer Jean Lepage.