I watched Hélène and felt cowed by the weight of my guilt. Every time she glanced at the children I knew she was wondering what would become of them. Once, I saw her talking quietly to the mayor, and I thought I heard her asking him to take them, if anything happened to her. I say this because he looked appalled, as if he were astonished that she should even think such a thing. I saw the new lines of strain as they threaded their way around her eyes and jaw, and knew that they were my doing.

The smaller children seemed oblivious to our private fears. Jean and Mimi played as they always had, whining and complaining of cold or each other’s minor transgressions. Hunger made them fractious. I dared not take the smallest scrap from the German supplies now, but it was hard telling them no. Aurélien was again locked in his own unhappiness. He ate silently, and spoke to neither of us. I wondered if he had been fighting again at school, but I was too preoccupied to give it further thought. Édith knew, though. She had the sensitivity of a divining rod. She stuck to my side at all times. At night she slept with my nightgown clenched in her right hand, and when I woke her big dark eyes would be fixed on my face. When I caught sight of my reflection, my face was haggard, unrecognizable even to myself.

News filtered through of two more towns taken by the Germans to the north-east. Our rations grew smaller. Each day seemed longer than the last. I served and cleaned and cooked but my thoughts were chaotic with exhaustion. Perhaps the Kommandant simply wouldn’t appear. Perhaps his shame at what had happened between us meant he couldn’t face seeing me. Perhaps he, too, felt guilt. Perhaps he was dead. Perhaps Édouard would walk through the door. Perhaps the war would end tomorrow. At this point I would usually have to sit down and take a breath.

‘Go upstairs and get some sleep,’ Hélène would murmur. I wondered if she hated me. I would have found it hard not to, if I were her.

Twice I returned to my hidden letters, from the months before we had become a German territory. I read Édouard’s words, about the friends he had made, their paltry rations, their good spirits, and it was like listening to a ghost. I read his words of tenderness to me, his promise that he would be with me soon, that I occupied his every waking thought.

I do this for France but, more selfishly, I do it for us, so that I may travel back across a Free France to my wife. The comforts of home; our studio, coffee in the Bar du Lyons, our afternoons curled up in bed, you passing me pieces of peeled orange … Things that were domestic mundanity have now taken on the glowing hues of treasure. Do you know how much I long to bring you coffee? To watch you brush your hair? Do you know how I long to watch you laughing on the other side of the table, and know that I am the cause of your happiness? I bring out these memories to console myself, to remind me why I am here. Stay safe for me. Know that I remain

Your devoted husband.

I read his words and now there was an extra reason to wonder whether I would ever hear them again.

I was down in the cellar, changing one of the casks of ale, when I heard footsteps on the flagstones. Hélène’s silhouette appeared in the doorway, blocking out the light.

‘The mayor is here. He says the Germans are coming for you.’

My heart stopped.

She ran to the dividing wall, and began pulling the loose bricks from their placements. ‘Go on – you can get out through next door if you hurry.’ She pulled them out, her hands scrabbling in her haste. When she had created a hole about the width of a small barrel, she turned to me. She glanced down at her hands, wrenched off her wedding ring and handed it to me, before pulling her shawl from her shoulders. ‘Take this. Go now. I’ll hold them up. But hurry, Sophie, they’re coming across the square.’

I looked down at the ring in my palm. ‘I can’t,’ I said.

‘Why not?’

‘What if he keeps his side of the deal?’

‘Herr Kommandant? Deal? How on earth can he be keeping his side of the deal? They are coming for you, Sophie! They are coming to punish you, to imprison you in a camp. You have gravely offended him! They are coming to send you away!’

‘But think about it, Hélène. If he wanted to punish me, he would have had me shot or paraded through the streets. He would have done to me what he did to Liliane Béthune.’

‘And risk revealing what he was punishing you for? Have you taken leave of your senses?’

‘No.’ My thoughts had begun to clear. ‘He has had time to consider his temper and he is sending me to Édouard. I know it.’

She pushed me towards the hole. ‘This is not you talking, Sophie. It is lack of sleep, your fears, a mania … You will come to your senses soon. But you need to go now. The mayor says to go to Madame Poilâne so that you can stay in the barn with the false floor tonight. I’ll try and send word to you later.’

I shook off her arm. ‘No … no. Don’t you see? The Kommandant cannot possibly bring Édouard back here, not without making it obvious what he has done. But if he sends me away, with Édouard, he can free us both.’

‘Sophie! Enough talking now!’

‘I kept my side of the deal.’

‘GO!’

‘No.’ We stared at each other in the near dark. ‘I’m not going.’

I reached for her hand and placed the ring in it, closing her fingers around it. I repeated quietly, ‘I’m not going.’

Hélène’s face crumpled. ‘You cannot let them take you, Sophie. This is insanity. They are sending you to a prison camp! Do you hear me? A camp! The very thing you said would kill Édouard!’