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darling. They’ve fallen in love with the attic unit. And how d’you think they’ll get access to it? What’s the only staircase that leads up there?’
    She turned to Felix to explain but he said, ‘I imagine it’ll be through Tony and Nicole’s unit?’
    â€˜You’re quick!’ She grinned. ‘Anyway, we’ll know soon enough. I think you’re playing with fire.’
    Adam looked at his watch and said, ‘They should be back by now – unless they’ve fallen into one of the septic tanks.’
    â€˜Let’s go and see.’ Sally led the way through the communal labyrinth to the front portico, where they arrived in time to see Tony and Nicole climbing out of the ha-ha that divided the front lawn from the parkland beyond. The lawn was flanked on either side by a rotting oak pergola, paved in red brick and so sunken in places that it would have been safer to walk on the lawn – if that wasn’t a riot of weeds and volunteer saplings. Nicole stopped to pick a small bunch of bluebells. Tony halted, too, beneath the two overarching roses, where he tapped the ashes and dottle from his pipe against his upturned left heel.
    â€˜Ha!’ Felix relished the complex arabesques of his silhouetted arms and legs.
    â€˜What?’ Adam asked, startled.
    â€˜That day. In Mauthausen. He tapped his pipe on his heel just like that.’
    â€˜He set fire to some GS stores once,’ Adam said. ‘“Just like that.”’
    â€˜Felix!’ Tony called out, having noticed them at last. To Adam he shouted, ‘Is he going to take one of the flats?’
    Nicole joined him and they trotted across the weed-littered carriage sweep; she had all the right attributes for a Mata Hari, Felix thought admiringly. Her hair had grown well again, lustrous, and raven-black – so black, indeed, that its highlights held a bluish sheen.
    â€˜Monsieur Breit?’ Rather shyly she offered him the bunch of bluebells from several paces away.
    â€˜ Pour moi , Madame Palmer?’ He swiftly descended the steps to their level. ‘ Vous êtes vraiment charmante! ’
    â€˜Ongley, cherry,’ Tony muttered.
    She gave him a look that would have served for mustard and passed the bouquet to Felix.
    â€˜Do the septic tanks look as if they’ll work?’ Sally asked.
    â€˜Nothing’s broken down above ground,’ Tony said. ‘It’s the sort of engineering an Ancient Egyptian would understand.’
    Nicole said, ‘My husband has told me your story, Monsieur Felix. I heard your name back in the war, when I was visiting Paris. You were arrested and then released?’
    â€˜The first time, yes. Tiens! ’ He held the bluebells up beside her cheeks and said to the two men, ‘The colour! It matches her eyes perfectly, see!’
    An English girl might have blushed, but not Nicole; her gaze remained as cool as the blue of her eyes – even when he brought the bouquet to his lips and gave it a playful kiss. ‘Sartre told me,’ she added.
    â€˜You knew him well?’ Felix asked, though he had never liked the man much.
    â€˜None of us knew him until after the Normandy landings,’ she sneered. ‘Then, tout d’un coup , we got to know many great artists and intellectuals who discovered overnight how anti-Nazi they had been all those comfortable, well-rewarded years.’
    â€˜Thank God it’s all over and done with, eh!’
    She sniffed. ‘Is it?’
    They drifted up the steps and indoors.
    â€˜I think I’ve found another interested couple,’ Tony said. ‘Name of Prentice, Arthur and May.’
    â€˜Not two more bloody architects, I hope,’ Adam said.
    â€˜He’s a cameraman with the BBC . They’re going to expand television transmissions soon, so it’s a good, secure thing. He worked for Pathé during the last show. Arthur’s more Felix’s age. When