The Girl You Left Behind

those places. The mayor
     believes him as good as dead already.’
    She leaned over the table, her voice urgent.
     ‘Sophie – there is no guarantee that Herr Kommandant will act honourably. He is a
     German! Why on earth should you trust a word that he says? You could lie down with him
     and it would all be for nothing!’
    I had never seen my sister so angry.
     ‘I have to go and speak with him. There is no other way.’
    ‘If this gets out, Édouard
     won’t want you.’
    We stared at each other.
    ‘You think you can keep it from him?
     You can’t. You are too honest. And even if you tried, do you think this town
     wouldn’t let him know?’
    She was right.
    She looked down at her hands. Then she got up
     and poured herself a glass of water. She drank it slowly, glancing up at me twice, and
     as the silence lengthened, I began to feel her disapproval, the veiled question within
     it, and it made me angry. ‘You think I would do this lightly?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ she said.
     ‘I don’t know you at all these days.’
    It was like a slap. My sister and I glared
     at each other and I felt as though I were teetering on the edge of something. Nobody
     fights you like your own sister; nobody else knows the most vulnerable parts of you and
     will aim for them without mercy. The spectre of my dance with the
Kommandant
edged around us, and I had a sudden feeling that we were without boundaries.
    ‘All right,’ I said.
     ‘Answer me this, Hélène. If it were your only chance to save
     Jean-Michel, what would you do?’
    At last I saw her waver.
    ‘Life or death. What would you do to
     save him? I know there are no limits to what you feel for him.’
    She bit her lip and turned to the black
     window. ‘This could all go so wrong.’
    ‘It won’t.’
    ‘You may well believe that. But you
     are impulsive by nature. And it is not only your future in the balance.’
    I stood then. I wanted to walk round the
     table to my sister. I wanted to crouch at her side and hold her and be told that it
     would all be all right, that we would all be safe. But her expression told me there was
     nothing more to say, so I brushed down my skirts and, broom in hand, walked towards the
     kitchen door.
    I slept fitfully that night. I dreamed of
     Édouard, of his face contorted with disgust. I dreamed of us arguing, of myself
     trying again and again to convince him that I had only done what was right, while he
     turned away. In one dream, he pushed the chair back from the table at which we sat
     arguing, and when I looked he had no lower body: his legs and half of his torso were
     missing.
There
, he said to me.
Are you satisfied now?
    I woke sobbing, to find Édith gazing
     down at me, her eyes black, unfathomable. She reached out a hand and gently touched my
     wet cheek, as if in sympathy. I reached out and held her to me and we lay there in
     silence, wrapped around each other as the dawn broke.
    I went through the day as if in a dream. I
     prepared breakfast for the children while Hélène went to the market, and
     watched as Aurélien, who was in one of his moods, took Édith to school. I
     opened the doors at ten o’clock and served the few people who came in at that
     time. Old René was laughing about some German military vehicle that had gone into a
     ditch down by the barracks, and could not be pulled out. This mishap caused merriment in
     the bar for a while. I smiled vaguely, and nodded that, yes, indeed, that would show
     them, yes, that was indeed fine German steering. I saw and heard it all as if from the
     inside of a bubble.
    At lunchtime Aurélien and Édith
     came in for a piece of bread and a small knob of cheese, and while they sat in the
     kitchen we received a notice from the mayor, requesting blankets and several sets of
     cutlery to go to a new billet a mile down the road. There was much grumbling as our
     customers observed the piece of paper and recalled that they,too,
     would return home to similar notices. Some small part of me was glad to be seen as part
     of the requisitioning.
    At three o’clock we paused to watch a
     German medical convoy pass, the line of vehicles and horses making our road vibrate. The
     bar was silent for some minutes afterwards. At four o’clock the mayor’s wife
     came in and thanked everyone for their kind letters and thoughts, and we asked her to
     stay for a cup of coffee but she refused. She was not good company, she said
     apologetically. She made her way