We both stared in silence at the portrait. The girl gazed steadily back at us, her hair around her neck, her expression challenging, glorious, sexually replete. My face.

I pulled my skirts over my legs, clutched my blouse around my neck. When I spoke, my voice was thick, tremulous. ‘I gave you … Herr Kommandant … everything I was capable of giving.’

His eyes became opaque, a sea that had frozen. The tic jumped in his jaw, a juddering pulse. ‘Get out,’ he said quietly.

I blinked.

‘I’m sorry,’ I stammered, when I realized I had heard him correctly. ‘If … I can … ’

‘GET OUT!’ he roared. He grabbed my shoulder, his fingers digging into my flesh, and wrenched me across the room.

‘My shoes … my shawls!’

‘OUT, DAMN YOU!’ I had time only to grab my painting, and then I was propelled out of the door, stumbling to my knees at the top of the stairs, my mind still struggling to grasp what was happening. There was the sound of a tremendous crash behind the door. And then another, this time accompanied by the sound of splintering glass. I glanced behind me. Then, barefoot, I ran down the stairs, across the courtyard and fled.

It took me almost an hour to walk home. I lost the feeling in my feet after a quarter of a mile. By the time I reached the town they were so frozen that I was not aware of the cuts and grazes I had collected on the long walk up the flinted farm track. I walked on, stumbling through the dark, the painting under my arm, shivering in my thin blouse, and I felt nothing. As I walked, my shock gave way to understanding of what I had done, and what I had lost. My mind spun with it. I walked through the deserted streets of my home town, no longer caring if anyone saw me.

I reached Le Coq Rouge shortly before one o’clock. I heard the clock chime a solitary note as I stood outside, and wondered briefly whether it would be better for everyone if I failed to let myself in at all. And then, as I stood there, a tiny glow appeared behind the gauze curtain and the bolts were drawn back on the other side. Hélène appeared, her night bonnet on, her white shawl around her. She must have waited up for me.

I looked up at her, my sister, and I knew then that she had been right all along. I knew that what I had done had put our entire family at risk. I wanted to tell her I was sorry. I wanted to tell her I understood the depth of my mistake, and that my love for Édouard, my desperation for our life together to continue, had made me blind to everything else. But I couldn’t speak. I just stood in the doorway, mute.

Her eyes widened as she took in my bare shoulders, my naked feet. She reached out a hand and pulled me in, closing the door behind her. She placed her shawl around my shoulders, smoothed my hair back from my face. Wordlessly, she led me to the kitchen, closed the door and lit the range. She heated a cup of milk, and as I held it (I couldn’t drink it), she unhooked our tin bath from its place on the wall and put it on the floor, in front of the range. She filled copper pot after copper pot with water, which she boiled, wrenched from the stove and poured into the bath. When it was full enough, she walked around me and carefully removed the shawl. She unlaced my blouse, then lifted my chemise over my head, as she might with a child. She unbuttoned my skirts at the back, loosened my corset, then unhooked my petticoats, laying them all on the kitchen table until I was naked. As I began to shake, she took my hand and helped me step into the bath.

The water was scalding, but I barely felt it. I lowered myself so that most of me, except my knees and shoulders, was under the water, ignoring the stinging of the cuts on my feet. And then my sister rolled up her sleeves, took a washcloth, and began to soap me, from my hair to my shoulders, from my back to my feet. She bathed me in silence, her hands tender as she worked, lifting each limb, gently wiping between each finger, carefully ensuring that there was no part of me not cleansed. She bathed the soles of my feet, delicately removing the small pieces of stone that had embedded themselves in the cuts. She washed my hair, rinsing it with a bowl until the water ran clear, then combed it out, strand by strand. She took the washcloth, and wiped at the tears that rolled silently down my cheeks. All the while she said nothing. Finally, as the water began to cool and I started to shake again, from cold or exhaustion or something else entirely, she took a large towel and wrapped me in it. Then she held me, put me into a nightgown and led me upstairs to my bed.

‘Oh, Sophie,’ I heard her murmur, as I drifted into sleep. And I think I knew even then what I had brought down upon us all.

‘What have you done?’

10

Days passed. Hélène and I went about our daily business like two actors. From afar perhaps we looked as we always had, but each of us floundered in a growing unease. Neither of us talked about what had happened. I slept little, sometimes only two hours a night. I struggled to eat. My stomach coiled itself tightly around my fear even as the rest of me threatened to unravel.

I returned compulsively to the events of that fateful evening, berating myself for my naïvety, my stupidity, my pride. For it must have been pride that had brought me to this. If I had pretended to enjoy the Kommandant’s attentions, if I had imitated my own portrait, I might have won his admiration. I might have saved my husband. Would that have been such a terrible thing to do? Instead I had held on to this ridiculous notion that by allowing myself to become a thing, a vessel, I was somehow lessening my infidelity. I was somehow being true to us. As if that could make any difference to Édouard.

Each day I waited, heart in mouth, and watched silently as the officers filed in and the Kommandant wasn’t with them. I was afraid to see him, but I was more afraid of his absence and what it might mean. One night, Hélène plucked up the courage to ask the officer with the salt-and-pepper moustache where he was, but he just waved a hand and said he was ‘too busy’. My sister’s eyes met mine and I knew that was no comfort to either of us.