The Girl You Left Behind

infectious.
    When Liliane slept, her face twitched with
     nightmares. Sometimes she woke clawing at the air and making indistinguishable sounds of
     anguish. If I could, I reached across to touch her arm, trying to bring her back gently
     to the land of the waking. Sometimes, staring out at the German landscape, I wondered
     why I did.
    Since I had discovered we were no longer
     heading for Ardennes my own faith had begun to desert me. The
Kommandant
and
     his deals now seemed a million miles away; my life at the hotel, with its gleaming
     mahogany bar, my sister and the village where I had grown up, had become dreamlike, as
     if I had imagined it a long time ago. Our reality was discomfort, cold, pain,
     ever-present fear, like a buzzing in my head. I tried to focus, to rememberÉdouard’s face, his voice, but even he failed me. I could
     conjure little pieces of him: the curl of his soft brown hair on his collar, his strong
     hands, but I could no longer bring them together into a comforting whole. I was more
     familiar now with Liliane’s broken hand resting in my own. I stared at it, with my
     home-made splints on her bruised fingers, and tried to remind myself that there was a
     purpose to all this: that the very point of faith was that it must be tested. It became
     harder, with every mile, to believe this.
    The rain cleared. We stopped in a small
     village and the young soldier unfolded his long limbs stiffly and climbed out. The
     engine stalled and we heard Germans talking outside. I wondered, briefly, if I might ask
     them for some water. My lips were parched, and my limbs feeble.
    Liliane, across from me, sat very still,
     like a rabbit scenting the air for danger. I tried to think past my throbbing head and
     gradually became aware of the sounds of a market: the jovial call of traders, the
     soft-spoken negotiations of women and stallholders. Just for a moment I closed my eyes
     and tried to imagine that the German accents were French, and that these were the sounds
     of St Péronne, the backdrop to my childhood. I could picture my sister, her pannier
     under her arm, picking up tomatoes and aubergines, feeling their weight and gently
     putting them back. I could almost feel the sun on my face, smell the
saucisson
,
     the
fromagerie
, see myself walking slowly through the stalls. Then the flap
     lifted and a woman’s face appeared.
    It was so startling that I let out an
     involuntary gasp. She stared at me and for a second I thought she was going tooffer us food – but she turned, her pale hand still holding up the
     canvas – and shouted something in German. Liliane scrambled across the back of the truck
     and pulled me with her. ‘Cover your head,’ she whispered.
    ‘What?’
    Before she could say anything else, a stone
     shot through the back and landed a stinging blow on my arm. I glanced down, confused,
     and another landed, cracking the side of my head. I blinked, and three, four more women
     appeared, their faces twisted with hate, their fists loaded with stones, rotting
     potatoes, pieces of wood, whatever missiles came to hand.
    ‘
Huren!
’
    Liliane and I huddled in the corner, trying
     to cover our heads as the armaments rained down on us, my head, my hands stinging at the
     impact. I was about to shout back at them:
why would you do this? What have we done
     to you?
But the hatred in their faces and voices chilled me. These women truly
     despised us. They would rip us apart, given a chance. Fear rose like bile in my throat.
     Until that moment I had not felt it as a physical thing, a creature that could shake my
     sense of who I was, blast my thoughts, loosen my bowel with terror. I prayed – I prayed
     for them to go, for it all to stop. And then when I dared to glance up I glimpsed the
     young soldier who had sat in the back. He was standing off to the side and lighting a
     cigarette, calmly surveying the market square. Then I felt fury.
    The bombardment continued for what was
     probably minutes but felt like hours. A fragment of brick struck my mouth and I tasted
     the iron slime of blood on my lip.Liliane didn’t cry out, but
     she flinched in my arms as each missile made contact. I held on to her as if there were
     nothing else solid in my universe.
    Then suddenly, abruptly, it stopped. My ears
     ceased ringing and a warm trickle of blood eased into the corner of my eye. I could just
     make out a conversation outside. Then the engine charged, the young soldier climbed