Hélène was still deep in thought. ‘If I had known …’ she said. ‘How did you become so brave, Sophie? My little sister! Who made you like this? You were a mouse when we were children. A mouse!’

I wasn’t sure I knew the answer.

And then, as we finally walked back into the house, as Hélène busied herself with the milk pan and Aurélien began to wash his poor, battered face, I stood before the portrait.

That girl, the girl Édouard had married, looked back with an expression I no longer recognized. He had seen it in me long before anyone else did: it speaks of knowledge, that smile, of satisfaction gained and given. It speaks of pride. When his Parisian friends had found his love of me – a shop girl – inexplicable, he had just smiled because he could already see this in me.

I never knew if he understood that it was only there because of him.

I stood and gazed at her and, for a few seconds, I remembered how it had felt to be that girl, free of hunger, of fear, consumed only by idle thoughts of what private moments I might spend with Édouard. She reminded me that the world is capable of beauty, and that there were once things – art, joy, love – that filled my world, instead of fear and nettle soup and curfews. I saw him in my expression. And then I realized what I had just done. He had reminded me of my own strength, of how much I had left in me with which to fight.

When you return, Édouard, I swear I will once again be the girl you painted.

2

The story of the pig-baby had reached most of St Péronne by lunchtime. The bar of Le Coq Rouge saw a constant stream of customers, even though we had little to offer other than chicory coffee; beer supplies were sporadic, and we had only a few ruinously expensive bottles of wine. It was astonishing how many people called just to wish us good day.

‘And you tore a strip off him? Told him to go away?’ Old René, chuckling into his moustache, was clutching the back of a chair and weeping tears of laughter. He had asked to hear the story four times now, and with every telling Aurélien had embellished it a little more, until he was fighting off the Kommandant with a sabre, while I cried ‘Der Kaiser ist Scheiss!’

I exchanged a small smile with Hélène, who was sweeping the floor of the café. I didn’t mind. There had been little enough to celebrate in our town lately.

‘We must be careful,’ Hélène said, as René left, lifting his hat in salute. We watched him, convulsed with renewed mirth as he passed the post office, pausing to wipe his eyes. ‘This story is spreading too far.’

‘Nobody will say anything. Everyone hates the Boche.’ I shrugged. ‘Besides, they all want a piece of pork. They’re hardly going to inform on us before their food arrives.’

The pig had been moved discreetly next door in the early hours of the morning. Some months ago Aurélien, chopping up old beer barrels for firewood, had discovered that the only thing separating the labyrinthine wine cellar from that of the neighbours, the Fouberts, was a single-skin brick wall. We had carefully removed several of the bricks, with the Fouberts’ co-operation, and this had become an escape route of last resort. When the Fouberts had harboured a young Englishman, and the Germans had arrived unannounced at their door at dusk, Madame Foubert had pleaded incomprehension at the officer’s instructions, giving the young man just enough time to sneak down to the cellar and through into our side. They had taken her house to pieces, even looked around the cellar, but in the dim light, not one had noticed that the mortar in the wall was suspiciously gappy.

This was the story of our lives: minor insurrections, tiny victories, a brief chance to ridicule our oppressors, little floating vessels of hope amid a great sea of uncertainty, deprivation and fear.

‘You met the new Kommandant, then?’ The mayor was seated at one of the tables near the window. As I brought him some coffee, he motioned to me to sit down. More than anyone else’s, his life, I often thought, had been intolerable since the occupation: he had spent his time in a constant state of negotiation with the Germans to grant the town what it needed, but periodically they had taken him hostage to force recalcitrant townspeople to do their bidding.

‘It was not a formal introduction,’ I said, placing the cup in front of him.

He tilted his head towards me, his voice low. ‘Herr Becker has been sent back to Germany to run one of the reprisal camps. Apparently there were inconsistencies in his book-keeping.’

‘That’s no surprise. He is the only man in Occupied France who has doubled in weight in two years.’ I was joking, but my feelings at his departure were mixed. On the one hand Becker had been harsh, his punishments excessive, born out of insecurity and a fear that his men would not think him strong enough. But he had been too stupid – blind to many of the town’s acts of resistance – to cultivate any relationships that might have helped his cause.

‘So, what do you think?’

‘Of the new Kommandant? I don’t know. He could have been worse, I suppose. He didn’t pull the house apart, where Becker might have, just to show his strength. But …’ I wrinkled my nose ‘… he’s clever. We might have to be extra careful.’

‘As ever, Madame Lefèvre, your thoughts are in harmony with my own.’ He smiled at me, but not with his eyes. I remembered when the mayor had been a jolly, blustering man, famous for his bonhomie: he’d had the loudest voice at any town gathering.