‘I’m sorry about … the young officer. Please assure your sister it will not happen again.’

I didn’t doubt it. Through the back window I had seen the man being helped back to his billet by one of his friends, a wet cloth pressed to the side of his head.

I thought the Kommandant might leave then, but he just stood there. I felt him staring at me. His eyes were unquiet, anguished almost.

‘The food tonight was … excellent. What was the name of the dish?’

‘Chou farci.’

He waited, and when the pause grew uncomfortably long, I added, ‘It’s sausage-meat, some vegetables and herbs, wrapped in cabbage leaves and poached in stock.’

He looked down at his feet. He took a few steps around the kitchen, then stopped, fingering a jar of utensils. I wondered, absently, if he were about to take them.

‘It was very good. Everyone said so. You asked me today what I would like to eat. Well … we would like to have that dish again before too long, if it is not too much trouble.’

‘As you wish.’

There was something different about him this evening, some subtle air of agitation that rose off him in waves. I wondered how it felt to have killed a man, whether it felt any more unusual to a German Kommandant than taking a second cup of coffee.

He glanced at me as if he were about to say something else, but I turned back to my pans. Behind him I could hear the drag of chair legs on the floor as the other officers prepared to leave. It was raining, a fine, mean spit that hit the windows almost horizontally.

‘You must be tired,’ he said. ‘I will leave you in peace.’

I picked up a tray of glasses and followed him towards the door. As he reached it, he turned and put on his cap, so that I had to stop. ‘I have been meaning to ask. How is the baby?’

‘Jean? He is fine, thank you, if a little –’

‘No. The other baby.’

I nearly dropped the tray. I hesitated for a moment, collecting myself, but I felt the blood rush to my neck. I knew he saw it.

When I spoke again, my voice was thick. I kept my eyes on the glasses in front of me. ‘I believe we are all … as well as we can be, given the circumstances.’

He thought about this. ‘Keep him safe,’ he said quietly. ‘Best he doesn’t come out in the night air too often.’ He looked at me a moment longer, then turned and was gone.

6

I lay awake that night, despite my exhaustion. I watched Hélène sleep fitfully, murmuring, her hand reaching across unconsciously to check that her children were beside her. At five, while it was still dark, I climbed out of bed, wrapping myself in several blankets, and tiptoed downstairs to boil water for coffee. The dining room was still infused with the scents of the previous evening: wood from the grate and a faint hint of sausage-meat that caused my stomach to rumble. I made myself a hot drink and sat behind the bar, gazing out across the empty square as the sun came up. As the blue light became streaked with orange, it was just possible to distinguish a faint shadow in the far right-hand corner where the prisoner had fallen. Had that young man had a wife, a child? Were they sitting at this moment composing letters to him or praying for his safe return? I took a sip of my drink and forced myself to look away.

I was about to go back to my room to dress when there was a rap at the door. I flinched, seeing a shadow behind the cotton screen. I pulled my blanket around me, staring at the silhouette, trying to work out who would be calling on us at such an hour, whether it was the Kommandant, come to torment me about what he knew. I walked silently towards the door. I lifted the screen and there, on the other side, was Liliane Béthune. Her hair was piled up in pin curls, she was wearing the black astrakhan coat, and her eyes were shadowed. She glanced behind her as I unlocked the top and bottom bolts and opened the door.

‘Liliane? Are you … do you need something?’ I said.

She reached into her coat and pulled out an envelope, which she thrust at me. ‘For you,’ she said.

I glanced at it. ‘But … how did you –’

She held up a pale hand, shook her head.

It had been months since any of us had received a letter. The Germans had long kept us in a communications vacuum. I held it, disbelieving, then recovered my manners. ‘Would you like to come in? Have some coffee? I have a little real coffee put by.’

She gave me the smallest of smiles. ‘No. Thank you. I have to go home to my daughter.’ Before I could even thank her, she was trotting up the street in her high heels, her back hunched against the cold.

I shut the screen and re-bolted the door. Then I sat down and tore open the envelope. His voice, so long absent, filled my ears.

Dearest Sophie

It is so long since I heard from you. I pray you are safe. I tell myself in darker moments that some part of me would feel it, like the vibrations of a distant bell, if you were not.

I have so little to impart. For once I have no desire to translate into colour the world I see around me. Words seem wholly inadequate. Know only that, precious wife, I am sound of mind and body, and that my spirit is kept whole by the thought of you.

The men here clutch photographs of their loved ones like talismans, protection against the dark – crumpled, dirty images endowed with the properties of treasure. I need no photograph to conjure you before me, Sophie: I need only to close my eyes to recall your face, your voice, your scent, and you cannot know how much you comfort me.

Know, my darling, that I mark each day not, like my fellow soldiers, as one that I am grateful to survive, but thanking God that each means I must surely be twenty-four hours closer to returning to you.