her arm from his and tucked her hair behind her ears, her hands shaking with equal measures of fear and anger. She noticed that the young man’s fists were still tightly clenched and his jaw was set in a hard line.
‘So this is what they do,’ he said, looking as sick as she felt. ‘Herd people into trucks like cattle and send them to those so-called work camps where they treat them like slaves. We’ve heard the reports, back in England, but seeing it happening right in front of me . . .’ He tailed off, swallowing his frustration.
‘I know,’ she replied, leading him towards the river. ‘It’s grotesque. What’s even more horrible is that half the time it’s the French police who man those barriers, not the Germans. It’s getting worse all the time.’
They walked on, subdued, alongside the mud-brown waters of the Seine. Mireille stumbled as her shoe caught on an uneven paving stone and he put out a hand to steady her. Wordlessly, he took her arm again and she gleaned a small degree of comfort in his proximity.
She didn’t want to risk going back into the Métro, so they continued on foot. He told her more of his life in the south as they followed the river upstream. He’d worked as a stonemason and had done his apprenticeship with his uncle who had been overseeing some maintenance work on the Cathédrale Saint-Pierre in Montpellier. He continued to hold her arm but his free hand described the complex, soaring lines of the Gothic arches he’d helped repair, painstakingly carving each piece of honeyed sandstone to fit perfectly where worn or damaged sections needed to be removed. She noticed the strength in his hands, and yet there was a grace in them too. As he talked, she could picture the delicate, lace-like detailing that he was capable of creating from such unyielding materials.
She told him a little about her life in the south-west too, about the mill house on the riverbank where she’d grown up, about the way the mill wheel was driven, harnessing the power of the water to turn the heavy millstones to grind the grist into flour as fine as freshly fallen snow. She described the kitchen, where her family would gather for meals cooked by her mother using the produce they grew in their garden, and the clear, golden honey that her sister produced from the beehives she tended, to sweeten their days.
It felt like such an indulgence to be able to talk about such things, sharing their memories with each other, and Mireille found herself wishing that she had more time to spend with this young man. They were approaching the Marais now, though, and in a few more minutes she would hand him over to Monsieur and Madame Arnaud. Then he would be spirited away on the unseen routes of the secret network, passed from one safe house to the next until a guide could lead him on the difficult and dangerous journey over the Pyrenees. She longed to be able to tell him her name, and to give him her address so that this comfortable feeling of connection between them could be continued one day. But she knew that to do so would place the pair of them – and a whole network of other people besides – in a perilous position if he was caught.
As they neared the narrow entrance at the end of the street where the Arnauds lived, she gently extracted her arm from his, feeling a strong pang of reluctance as she did so, longing to stay close to him for a little longer.
She heard the shouting just as she was about to turn the corner. There was a harsh cry of ‘HALT!’ followed by a woman’s scream.
In that split second, Mireille saw, with horror, the scene that was unfolding outside the safe house. A black car was parked at the door and an officer in the dark uniform of the Gestapo was pushing Madame Arnaud into the back of it. At the same time, another soldier had pushed Monsieur Arnaud to the ground and was aiming a couple of vicious kicks at his belly.
The young man’s fists clenched tight at his sides and his whole body tensed, as if he were about to spring forward and try to intervene.
Mireille realised with horrible clarity that their presence would surely seal the Arnauds’ fate once and for all, and their own as well. There was nothing they could