‘And there was this, monsieur,’ he said.

He held out to me the sheet of parchment I’d picked up in the cave, then forgotten about in the horror of discovering the mass grave.

‘You were holding on to it so tightly, I thought it must be important.’

He leaned forward and put it on the bed beside me. The coarse weave was yellow against the white, white sheets.

Gratitude flooded through me. ‘Thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.’ I picked it up. ‘Did you read it?’

He shook his head. ‘It’s in the old language.’

‘Occitan, but surely…’ I stopped, realising he might not be able to read. I had no wish to embarrass him. ‘If you hadn’t stuck with it, Guillaume, well… I owe you my life.’

And you, Fabrissa, I added under my breath. And you…

‘Anyone would have done the same,’ he said gruffly, standing up. The feet of the chair scraped on the linoleum. He was not a man to make anything of his own heroism, and now he had discharged his duty he was eager to leave.

I knew he was wrong. Although George told me of the towering acts of courage he had witnessed, not every man had it in him to put his life on the line for another.

‘Better get off,’ he said.

‘It was good of you to come. If there’s anything you need, any way I can thank you for-’

‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘My father said to pass on our thanks to you. He said he thought you would know what he meant.’

I hesitated, then nodded. ‘I think I do,’ I said. ‘Give my regards to him. And to Madame Galy.’

‘I will.’

He put his cap back on his head and turned to go.

‘Merry Christmas to you, Guillaume.’

‘And to you, monsieur.’

He lingered for a moment, his broad frame filling the doorway and blotting out the light from the corridor beyond. Then he was gone.

I held the parchment close to my face, too nervous to open it even though I knew I would not be able to read it. But I knew it was meant for me. A letter from Fabrissa to me. No, not me. Whoever it was that heard the voices in the mountain and came to bring them home.

I opened it flat. The handwriting was scratched and uneven, lines overlapping one another as if the author had run out of ink or light or strength. I still couldn’t distinguish one word from the next, but this time my tired eyes found a date at the bottom of the page and three initials: FDN.

Was ‘F’ for Fabrissa? I wanted to believe so, certainly. But as to the rest? It would have to wait. I would have to wait.

I lay back on the pillows.

There was no rational way to explain any of it. Only that it had happened. For a moment, I had slipped between the cracks in time and Fabrissa had come to me. A ghost, a spirit? Or a real woman displaced from her own time to that cold December? It was beyond my comprehension, but now I understood it did not matter. Only the consequences mattered. She had sought my help and I had given it.

‘My own love,’ I said.

Because of her, I had faced my own demons. She had freed me to look to the future. Not endlessly trapped in that one moment when the clocks stopped on 15 September 1916. Not stuck on 11 November 1921 at the memorial to the Royal Sussex Regiment in Chichester Cathedral, unable to bear, for one second longer, not knowing where George had fallen. Not condemned to watch champagne spill and drip, drip from the table of an expensive restaurant in Piccadilly.

I closed my eyes. Around me, the noise of the hospital. The squeak of wheels in a distant corridor. And somewhere, out of sight, the sound of voices singing carols for Christmas.

*

‘And so,’ Freddie said, ‘here I am. I had not been able to come before.’

He sat back in his chair, his hand cupped around the tumbler of brandy. Saurat looked at him.

The shadows had lengthened while they had talked. The late-afternoon sun, shining through the metal grille across the window of the bookshop, cast diamond-shaped patterns on the floor inside the bookshop.

Saurat cleared this throat. ‘And for the past five years?’

‘I returned to England. Not straight away, but when it was clear there was nothing…’ Freddie broke off. ‘Then, of course, the Slump, and all that followed. My few stocks and shares became worthless overnight. I had no option but to find a way of earning a living. I rented rooms in a house and got myself a job with the Imperial War Graves Commission in London. Modest enough, but sufficient for my needs.’

‘I see.’

‘We unveiled the memorial at Thiepval, to those who died at the Battle of the Somme, on the first of July nineteen thirty-two. My brother’s regiment, the three Southdowner Battalions, went over the top on the eve of the Somme. They took the German front line and held it for a while, but then fell back. In less than five hours, seventeen officers and nearly three hundred and fifty men of Sussex were lost. The following day, the main engagement began.’

‘And since then?’

‘Travelling, around France and Belgium for the most part. I’m one of the team of men responsible for the upkeep of the headstones and the crosses of sacrifice and the cemeteries.’

‘So no one is forgotten.’

‘We remember so that such slaughter is never allowed to happen again. George, Madame Galy’s son, the men of the Ariège, the Southdowners, we must remember them. All the lost boys.’ Freddie stopped. This was not the time or the place.

He took a sip of his drink, then carefully replaced the heavy tumbler on the table and pushed the parchment across the green felt.

Saurat held Freddie’s gaze for a moment. In his eyes, he saw neither expectation nor anxiety, but instead resolve. He realised that, whatever lay within the letter, it would come as no surprise to the Englishman.

‘You are ready?’

Freddie closed his eyes. ‘I am.’

Saurat adjusted his spectacles on the bridge of his nose, then began to read.

‘Bones and shadows and dust. I am the last. The others have slipped away into darkness. Around me now, at the end of my days, only an echo in the still air of the memory of those who once I loved.

Solitude, silence. Peyre sant.

The end is coming and I welcome it as one might a familiar friend, long absent. This has been a slow death, trapped here. One by one, every heart stopped beating. My brother first, then my mother and my father. Now the only sound is my shallow breathing. That, and the gentle dripping of water down the mossy walls of the cave. As if the mountain itself is weeping. As if it, too, is mourning the dead.

We heard them, their footsteps, and thought ourselves safe. We heard the rocks, one by one, being piled up, the hammering of the wood, but still we did not understand that they were sealing the entrance to the cave for good. And this underground city, lit only by candles and torches, once our refuge, became our tomb.

These are the last words I will write. It will not be long. My body does not obey me now. My last candle is burning out. This is my testament, the record of how once men and women and children lived and died in this forgotten corner of the world. I write it down so that those who come after us will know the truth.

I do not fear death. But I fear the forgetting. I fear that there will be no one to mark the moment of our passing. One day, someone will find us. Find us and bring us home. For when all else is done, only words remain. Words endure.

And I shall set this last truth down. We are who we are because of those we choose to love and because of those who love us. Peyre sant, God of good spirits, have mercy on my soul.