I hadn’t smoked all night, I suppose because nobody else had. Hadn’t even thought about it. But now I fished in my pocket and pulled out my cigarette case and matches.

‘Do you mind?’ I said, taking one out and tapping it on the silver lid.

Fabrissa leaned towards me. ‘What are they?’

‘Gauloise,’ I replied. ‘I’m a Dunhill man in the normal run of things, but they’re impossible to get down here.’

I offered the case to her. She shook her head, but seemed transfixed by what I was doing. She watched intently as I put the cigarette in my mouth, then cupped it with my hand, struck the match and held it against the tip. Her eyes grew wide as a wisp of smoke wreathed up into the dawn air and she reached out, as if to wind it around her fingers like thread.

‘It is beautiful.’

‘Beautiful?’ I laughed, charmed. ‘That’s one way of putting it, I suppose.’ I snapped my case shut, returning it and the matches to my pocket. ‘You’re remarkable. I can honestly say I’ve never met anyone like you before.’

‘I am no different from anyone else,’ she said.

I smiled, thinking both how wrong she was and how delightful she did not realise it.

We sat in silence for a while. I smoked. She fixed her eyes on the dark horizon, as though counting the stars. Were there actually stars? I can’t remember.

Then I heard her catch her breath and knew Fabrissa had been arranging her story in her mind, as I had done. I crushed the remains of my cigarette beneath the sole of my boot and turned to listen. I wanted to know everything about her, as much as she would tell me, anything. Tiny details. Irrelevant, beautiful details.

‘I was born on an afternoon in spring,’ she began. ‘The world was coming back to life after a hard winter. The snow had melted and the streams were flowing again. Tiny mountain flowers of blue and pink and yellow filled the fields of the upper valley. My father used to say that on the day I was born, he heard the first cuckoo sing. A good omen, he said.

‘Our neighbours came with a loaf they had baked, white flour, not coarse brown grain. Others also brought gifts: a brown woollen blanket for winter, furs, an earthenware cup, a wooden box containing spices. Most precious, salt wrapped up in a piece of cotton, dyed blue.

‘It was May. Already, the shepherds and their flocks had returned from their winter pastures in Spain and the village was full of life and sound – the women chatting in the square, the wooden treadles of their looms clattering on the cobbled stones.’

She paused. I was happy to wait. I wanted to let her tell her story at her own pace, in her own way, as she had allowed me to do. Besides, the pleasure of listening to her voice was such that she could have recited a laundry list and still it would have rung like music in my ears.

‘My birth was seen as a sign that things might be changing for the better,’ she said. ‘And my mother and father were well liked and respected in the village. They were loyal, honourable people. My father wrote letters on behalf of those who could not read or write. He explained the ways of the courts to those who needed representation or his help. Each fulfilled the role most suited to his character.’

‘I see,’ I said, though I did not.

‘After years of violence and denunciation, it seemed our enemies had set their sights elsewhere and, for a while, we were at peace. There were, of course, the usual struggles, disagreements common to communities living in the shadow of war. But they were isolated incidents, not part of a systematic reprisal. And although we all knew someone who had been taken, most people were released with no more than the punishment of wearing the cross.’

Instinctively, my hand moved to my pocket. I took out the scrap of material and laid it across my knee.

‘This was a way of marking people out?’

I looked down at the tattered piece of cloth, the yellow faded and sour. I had heard of the Germans inflicting penalties on civilians – The Times had written of it – but nothing like this.

‘It was intended to humiliate, certainly,’ she replied. ‘But when so many were branded in the same way, it became a sign of good character.’

‘A badge of honour.’

‘Yes.’

Realising now it might be a symbol of her survival and that, therefore, she might wish to keep it, I held it out.

‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have taken it.’

She shook her head. I hesitated, then returned it to my pocket. It was hardly an orthodox love token, but it was all that I had.

‘The raids became more frequent. Whole villages arrested, or so it was said – men, women, children. In Montaillou, little under a day’s walk, everybody over the age of twelve was taken before the court in Pamiers. The interrogations went on for weeks. People talked of it in hushed whispers, behind hands and closed doors. Even so, we hoped our village was too small to matter to anyone but us.’

For the second time in so many days, my school-master’s dusty words came back into my mind.

‘A green land soaked red with the blood of the faithful,’ I murmured.

The effect of my words on Fabrissa was immediate. Her eyes lit up.

‘You know something of our history?’

‘Very little, I’m afraid. Only that this region is no stranger to conflict.’

‘You will know, then, of the endless years spent fearing those we loved would be taken from us in the night. Never knowing whom to trust, that was the worst of it. Seduced by promises of safety and wealth, there were those who became spies. Who betrayed their own. I feared our enemies, but did not hate them.’ She hesitated. ‘But those who turned away from who they were and joined the fight against us, it was hard not to despise them.’

I nodded. In the early days of the War, I suppose it must have been during George’s first leave home, I’d overheard him and Father talking through the study door, left ajar. I remember him explaining how he bore no hatred towards the ordinary German soldier, the men like him who fought for their country, fair and square. Father nodding, ‘yes, yes’, and the air thick with cigarettes and whisky. But for those who would not fight, the Conchies, or those who spied for the other side, he had nothing but disgust. And as I listened in the hall, excluded from this man’s world, I heard the admiration in Father’s voice. And, God help me, I was jealous.

‘I didn’t realise the Germans were active in this part of France,’ I said, as much to myself as to Fabrissa, trying to push away the unhappy memories. I knew the roll-call of battles – Loos, Arras, Boar’s Head Hill, Passchendaele – each as notorious for the huge loss of life as for any supposed military success. But I couldn’t recall any significant engagement below the Loire Valley.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I was young, but already I knew that the war was not about faith, but rather territory and wealth and greed and power.’

‘Yes,’ I said, thinking of George’s contempt for the politicians who sent good men to die.

The light was thickening, giving shape back to the world. I glanced at Fabrissa and saw how very pale her skin was, its patina almost blue in the dawn.

‘Then, one day, it happened. The soldiers came for us.’