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you … someone you least suspect.’
    Patrick and Olivier said nothing more and I knew they wouldn’t budge, so I tossed my head, swung a leg over the saddle and pedalled away furiously. I trilled the bell at pedestrians who got in my way, not slowing for anyone as I hurtled across the square, down the main road and veered off onto the path through the woods.
    Sweat soon drenched my clothes and I flung the bike against a willow trunk and tramped down to the water’s edge. The Vionne blazed with a wealth of sun pennies and a butterfly, fluttering lazily from one rock to another, flitted off as I bent from the gravelly shore and gulped palmfuls of water.
    I looked around. Nobody in sight except a few bold birds braving the heat. I tore my dress and underwear off and slid, naked, into the river.
    I floated on my back, murmuring with the ecstasy of cool water against hot skin. The current tugged at me like a playful hand, slices of sun casting black shadows into the dark, furtive places on the riverbed.
    I flexed my feet, wriggled my toes, and studied my hand, yellowed in that strange underwater light. I laid a palm against my stomach, tracing small circles, and caught my breath as my nipples hardened with the coolness, my small breasts peeking from the surface like milky islands.
    When the water crimped my skin like a dried apple, I grabbed a clutch of dangling roots and hauled myself onto the bank.
    I brushed stray weeds off, dried myself with my dress, and slipped the damp garment over my head. I shook my hair out, gathered flat pebbles and started skimming them across the water. It was so quiet I could hear the flutter of feathers in nests, the sound of pecking on bark, the fidgeting of insects in the grass.
    A pebble skimmed over the water, but not one I’d thrown, and I stopped, my arm held aloft. Another stone flew past, bouncing three times across the water. I heard a rustling noise behind me, too loud for a bird, and spun around to the smiling face of Martin Diehl.
    I swallowed my gasp, horrified the German might’ve glimpsed me naked.
    ‘Did you follow me from Julien?’
    ‘You pedalled away very fast. I thought I would never catch you,’ he said. ‘Why are you angry?’
    ‘Angry?’
    ‘Your brother and his friend. You looked so fierce at them, and cycling away in a hurry.’
    ‘Oh, that. It wasn’t important, just a silly argument.’
    He removed his cap and jacket, and as he lit a Gauloise I glimpsed the powerful muscles move in his neck. But I kept my gaze guarded and low, fascinated by his gun peeping from its leather sheath.
    ‘You’re a good skimmer, Céleste Roussel.’
    ‘My father taught me. He taught me everything about this river; warned me about the currents and whirlpools, and made me promise never to swim here.’
    A long arm reached out, fingertips grazing my wet hair. ‘Ah yes, I see you take much notice of him.’ I reeled from his touch and he shifted sideways, and sat on a boulder, casually crossing one long leg over the other.
    ‘This is for you.’ He pulled a brown paper package from a pocket. ‘You might have to come a little closer to reach it though.’ He patted a spot beside him.
    I couldn’t help smiling at his stiff, stilted French, but kept observing him and the package warily. Accepting gifts from the Boche was regarded as collaboration.
    ‘For me?’ I edged towards his rock, but kept standing. ‘Why?’
    ‘You were admiring them at the market, no? You can open it.’
    Despite my misgivings, I tore the paper off and pulled out a packet of nylon stockings.
    ‘Oh they’re lovely. I’ve never had any like this. Thank you, Martin Diehl.’
    ‘There is more where I got these,’ he said, as a small bird in a green suit perched on a log, cocking its head as if it too, was admiring the stockings. ‘What else do you like? Magazines? Lipstick? Chocolate? Real chocolate, not false, pale chocolate. I can get what you want.’
    I laughed a nervy kind of cackle. Why was the