And if I do, she thinks, Sophie will be on record for ever as a woman who slept with a German, who betrayed her country as well as her husband. And I will be no better than the townspeople who hung her out to dry.

Once it is done, it cannot be undone.

29

1917

I no longer wept for home. I could not say how long we had been travelling, for the days and nights merged, and sleep had become a fleeting, sporadic visitor. Some miles outside Mannheim my head had begun to ache, swiftly followed by a fever that left me alternately shivering and fighting the urge to shed what few clothes remained. Liliane sat beside me, wiping my forehead with her skirt, helping me when we stopped. Her face was drawn with tension. ‘I’ll be better soon,’ I kept telling her, forcing myself to believe that this was just a passing cold, the inevitable outcome of the past few days, the chill air, the shock.

The truck bucked and wheeled around the potholes, the canvas billowed, allowing in spatters of ice-cold rain, and the young soldier’s head bobbed, his eyes opening with the bigger jolts and fixing on us with a sudden glare as if to warn us to remain where we should be.

I dozed against Liliane, and woke periodically, watching the little triangle of canvas that exposed briefly the landscape we had left behind. I watched the bombed and pitted borders give way to more orderly towns, where whole rows of houses existed without visible damage, their black beams strident against white render, their gardens filled with pruned shrubs and well-tended vegetable patches. We passed vast lakes, bustling towns, wound our way through deep forests of fir trees, where the vehicle whined and its tyres struggled for purchase in mud tracks. Liliane and I were given little: cups of water and hunks of black bread, thrown into the back as one would hurl scraps to pigs.

And then as I grew more feverish I cared less about the lack of food. The pain in my stomach was smothered by other pains; my head, my joints, the back of my neck. My appetite disappeared and Liliane had to urge me to swallow water over my sore throat, reminding me that I must eat while there was food, that I had to stay strong. Everything she said had an edge, as if she always knew far more than she chose to let on about what awaited us. With each stop her eyes widened with anxiety, and even as my thoughts clouded with illness, her fear became infectious.

When Liliane slept, her face twitched with nightmares. Sometimes she woke clawing at the air and making indistinguishable sounds of anguish. If I could, I reached across to touch her arm, trying to bring her back gently to the land of the waking. Sometimes, staring out at the German landscape, I wondered why I did.

Since I had discovered we were no longer heading for Ardennes my own faith had begun to desert me. The Kommandant and his deals now seemed a million miles away; my life at the hotel, with its gleaming mahogany bar, my sister and the village where I had grown up, had become dreamlike, as if I had imagined it a long time ago. Our reality was discomfort, cold, pain, ever-present fear, like a buzzing in my head. I tried to focus, to remember Édouard’s face, his voice, but even he failed me. I could conjure little pieces of him: the curl of his soft brown hair on his collar, his strong hands, but I could no longer bring them together into a comforting whole. I was more familiar now with Liliane’s broken hand resting in my own. I stared at it, with my home-made splints on her bruised fingers, and tried to remind myself that there was a purpose to all this: that the very point of faith was that it must be tested. It became harder, with every mile, to believe this.

The rain cleared. We stopped in a small village and the young soldier unfolded his long limbs stiffly and climbed out. The engine stalled and we heard Germans talking outside. I wondered, briefly, if I might ask them for some water. My lips were parched, and my limbs feeble.

Liliane, across from me, sat very still, like a rabbit scenting the air for danger. I tried to think past my throbbing head and gradually became aware of the sounds of a market: the jovial call of traders, the soft-spoken negotiations of women and stallholders. Just for a moment I closed my eyes and tried to imagine that the German accents were French, and that these were the sounds of St Péronne, the backdrop to my childhood. I could picture my sister, her pannier under her arm, picking up tomatoes and aubergines, feeling their weight and gently putting them back. I could almost feel the sun on my face, smell the saucisson, the fromagerie, see myself walking slowly through the stalls. Then the flap lifted and a woman’s face appeared.

It was so startling that I let out an involuntary gasp. She stared at me and for a second I thought she was going to offer us food – but she turned, her pale hand still holding up the canvas – and shouted something in German. Liliane scrambled across the back of the truck and pulled me with her. ‘Cover your head,’ she whispered.

‘What?’

Before she could say anything else, a stone shot through the back and landed a stinging blow on my arm. I glanced down, confused, and another landed, cracking the side of my head. I blinked, and three, four more women appeared, their faces twisted with hate, their fists loaded with stones, rotting potatoes, pieces of wood, whatever missiles came to hand.

‘Huren!’

Liliane and I huddled in the corner, trying to cover our heads as the armaments rained down on us, my head, my hands stinging at the impact. I was about to shout back at them: why would you do this? What have we done to you? But the hatred in their faces and voices chilled me. These women truly despised us. They would rip us apart, given a chance. Fear rose like bile in my throat. Until that moment I had not felt it as a physical thing, a creature that could shake my sense of who I was, blast my thoughts, loosen my bowel with terror. I prayed – I prayed for them to go, for it all to stop. And then when I dared to glance up I glimpsed the young soldier who had sat in the back. He was standing off to the side and lighting a cigarette, calmly surveying the market square. Then I felt fury.