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nodded. He pulled a flask from an inside coat pocket and handed it to her.
    ‘It’s water,’ he said, ‘it’s all we have left’, grudgingly handing the flask over to her.
    She drank all of the water in the flask in one go and then looked at the two boys.
    ‘I’ll take a baguette and half of the cheese and sausage. Then you can stay. It’s your rent. Keep quiet and stay away from the windows. Understand?’
    The boys nodded. They had risked their lives for this food and now had given half of it away, but they had no alternative. Crouched on the floor, shoulder to shoulder, they sat in silence, eating while sunlight swept into the room, picking out the dust and the cobwebs. The boys were exhausted and by noon had fallen asleep.
    She stayed on the sofa, the remains of the bread and her share of the cheese and the sausage carefully stashed in her bag, which she clutched to her chest. By early afternoon, she had a plan. She would head for the hospital. It was the natural place for her to go. They would probably welcome her and, apart from anything else, there she would have a good chance of finding a new identity.
    She left the boys asleep. She thought about taking the remains of the sausage that was poking out of the older boy’s side pocket, but he was stirring and she thought better of it.
    There were plenty of grey uniformed Germans in the streets, but they weren’t stopping anyone, as far as she could tell. In the distance, there was the muffled sound of artillery fire and the occasional roar of aircraft. Outside a bombed church she noticed a queue forming, which she instinctively joined. She still had some cash and if this was a chance to buy something while her money was worth anything she did not want to let it pass. The people in the queue were talking quietly. The Allies were trying to retake the town, she heard someone say. An attack was imminent. God would save them. It was only when she reached the front of the queue that she realised she had been wasting her time. A young priest was sitting on a chair in the porch of the church taking confession, his cassock gently blowing around his shoulders in the wind. She turned to leave, but thought that would only bring unwanted attention, so she allowed him to bless her and mutter a prayer she didn’t bother to listen to.
    As she moved away there was a roar of artillery, much nearer now. Two old men were discussing it: ‘it’s coming in this direction,’ said one. The other shook his head: ‘No, it’s being fired from the town.’ It hardly seemed to matter as far as she was concerned. She had no idea of which side she was meant to be on anyway.
    She headed towards the centre of the town. The first bridge that she came to was intact and she joined the throng of people hurrying across the Somme. It was only when she was halfway over the bridge that she found she had been sucked into a queue with German soldiers marshalling people into rows. This was nothing like the checkpoint outside the town, manned by just one or two easily distracted soldiers. This was a proper checkpoint. The civilians were being funnelled into one of four rows, each row guarded by half a dozen soldiers with their machine guns drawn. At the end of each row was a trestle table, with a black-uniformed SS officer sat alongside a Wehrmacht officer. Behind the trestle tables was another row of tables, laden with paper work and manned by anxious officials. The officers at the first table were passing the identity cards they were checking to the men at the second row of tables.
    There was nothing she could do. She had walked into a trap and there was simply no prospect of her being able to slip away from it. She edged along the queue, taking care to breathe slowly and look calm and, above all, avoid drawing attention to herself.
    After all, why would they be interested in her, she tried to reassure herself. She had a good cover story: I am a nurse, heading for the hospital, ready to volunteer my