The gendarme made a waving-away gesture and said: ‘Don’t bother.’

Lloyd saw that he had been wildly optimistic. He was a foreigner without papers heading for the Spanish border: they simply assumed he was an escaping British soldier. If they had any doubt, they would find proof when they ordered him to strip, for they would see the identity tag around his neck. He had not thrown it away, for without it he would automatically be shot as a spy.

And now he was stuck in a car with three armed men, and the likelihood that he would find a way to escape was zero.

They drove on, in the direction in which he had been heading, as the sun went down over the mountains on their right-hand side. There were no big towns between here and the border, so he assumed they intended to put him in a village jail for the night. Perhaps he could escape from there. Failing that, they would undoubtedly take him back to Perpignan tomorrow and hand him over to the city police. What then? Would he be interrogated? The prospect made him cold with fear. The French police would beat him up, the Germans would torture him. If he survived, he would end up in a prisoner of war camp, where he would remain until the end of the war, or until he died of malnutrition. And yet he was only a few miles from the border!

They drove into a small town. Could he escape between the car and the jail? He could make no plan: he did not know the terrain. There was nothing he could do but remain alert and seize any opportunity.

The car turned off the main street and into an alley behind a row of shops. Were they going to shoot him here and dump his body?

The car stopped at the back of a restaurant. The yard was littered with boxes and giant cans. Through a small window Lloyd could see a brightly lit kitchen.

The gendarme in the front passenger seat got out, then opened Lloyd’s door, on the side of the car nearest the building. Was this his chance? He would have to run around the car and along the alley. It was dusk: after the first few yards he would not be an easy target.

The gendarme reached into the car and grasped Lloyd’s arm, holding him as he got out and stood up. The second one got out immediately behind Lloyd. The opportunity was not good enough.

But why had they brought him here?

They walked him into the kitchen. A chef was beating eggs in a bowl and an adolescent boy was washing up in a big sink. One of the gendarmes said: ‘Here’s an Englishman. He calls himself Leandro.’

Without pausing in his work, the chef lifted his head and bawled: ‘Teresa! Come here!’

Lloyd remembered another Teresa, a beautiful Spanish anarchist who had taught soldiers to read and write.