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German giving me presents? Surely not because of my looks –– the unmistakeable stamp of a plain, unworldly farm-girl.
    I forced a smile to cover my unease, and mask the prods of doubt at his interest in me; at his curiosity in my spat with Patrick and Olivier, cycling off to their meeting without me.
    ‘Why do you smile, Céleste Roussel?’
    ‘Nothing … your funny accent.’
    ‘Ah, the bad school-boy French. You did not learn German?’
    ‘Your French is very good. But no, sadly, I didn’t learn German.’
    ‘Why is this sad? So you cannot listen to our plans at the garrison?’
    ‘What? Listen to what plans?’
    ‘Do not worry, Céleste Roussel, I am only making a joke.’
    ‘Oh. Well, my mother didn’t let me stay at school long enough to learn anything much.’
    ‘Your mother is the healer-woman of the village, yes? She believes teaching you the special medicine is more important than school?’
    ‘Not likely. My mother thinks I’m too stupid to learn anything. Anyway, I’m not the least bit interested in all that herbal stuff, and if her remedies are no longer handed down to future generations of L’Auberge, she’ll only have herself to blame.’
    ‘Why do you call it L’Auberge des Anges?’ Martin said, grinding his cigarette butt beneath a black heel. ‘It is not an inn.’
    ‘Not these days. Now it’s just a simple farm. We don’t even have crops any longer, only the orchard and Maman’s kitchen garden and a few animals. My father said it was once the greatest farm in Lucie, but it ran into hard times during the Revolution. The farmer and his wife turned it into an inn –– The Inn of Angels.’
    We were silent for a moment, listening to the gaa, gaa laugh of the green bird until it flew off into the hot twists of light. I fingered the packet of nylons again. Martin Diehl probably got them on the black market, but didn’t my mother say the black market was for everyone; that we should all have the right to the same things, and almost everyone was practising it to some extent?
    ‘Well,’ I said, imagining Talia’s happiness. ‘If you really can get more things I’d like some paints … and brushes and paper.’
    ‘So you are not only a champion pebble skimmer, you are an artist too?’ His lips curved into a smile, showing impossibly white teeth.
    ‘I dabble in a bit of painting now and then,’ I said, with a flippant wave. ‘Nothing serious.’
    He lit another Gauloise and gathered more pebbles.
    ‘There are rivers where I was a boy,’ he said, flicking his stones across the surface. ‘We were swimming too, and skimming the stones.’ He squinted into the distance, to a point where the Vionne parted around a sandbank, ruffles of current lapping the edges. ‘And many orchards and fields, just like your village.’ He still clipped his words, but the voice had become faraway, like a melancholic background song.
    ‘You’re not a bad skimmer either, Martin Diehl,’ I said, throwing my own stones, which bounced further than his did.
    ‘My friends and I would have skimming competitions when we were young,’ he went on. ‘One of the boys had a beautiful sister. He would steal her underwear, and the one who skimmed his stone the best, got to keep the underwear for a night.’ He laughed and shook the blond head, as if recalling the silliness of boyhood games.
    ‘So, did you ever win?’
    He frowned. ‘Win?’
    ‘The skimming competitions?’
    The muscles in his shoulder tightened beneath the starched shirt as he skimmed another stone, further and more smoothly than the last. ‘I always won, Céleste Roussel.’
    ‘Oh,’ I said, not really sure what to say. ‘Well, me too, I like to win.’
    He caught me unaware then, as he reached across and took hold of my pendant. I lurched back, imagining the same hand levelling a revolver, a machine-gun or a grenade.
    ‘An unusual pendant.’ He stroked the angel between his thumb and forefinger. ‘It seems old. A family … how