The Kripo came later that day. Sibyl was in no state to be interviewed but her grief was so palpable, her devastation so complete, they did not stay long; the coroner’s verdict of suicide would not be contested. It was obvious.

Oncle Yves supplied the missing information: yes, his niece Marlene Schuster, von Haagen’s dearly beloved fiancée, had been with him when he had turned the gun on himself. He had been severely depressed due to the inevitability of German defeat. Fräulein Schuster could not have prevented it; it all happened too quickly and she was plainly shattered by the event. He himself had gone across to ascertain what had happened after her arrival home; he had then reported the death to police headquarters. That was all.

On further questioning he admitted to removing a side of ham and a half-full bottle of gewürztraminer from the scene; charges of theft were made and later dropped.

Sibyl went into hibernation, refusing to leave her room for any reason but the bathroom and toilet. She sobbed beneath the eiderdown, her head usually buried in a pillow, or else she slept, falling into coma-like slumber that could last all day or all night. Margaux came once the snow was adequately cleared. Jacques was with her. She did not respond to either. A week passed, and another and another.

And then came the day that Oncle Yves refused to indulge her a moment longer.

‘You are getting out of bed today!’ he scolded. ‘You are getting dressed and coming with me!’

He forced her out of bed. He pulled clothes on to her, even while she protested. He dragged her down the stairs, pushed her arms into the sleeves of her sheepskin jacket and her feet into her boots. He hauled her out of the front door and along the streets to the main square of Colmar. It was crowded: filled with laughing citizens, cheering and singing the Marsellaise, rejoicing, dancing citizens crying France is free! Alsace is free!

Earlier that day army tanks once more had rolled through the streets of Colmar; the citizens, peering from their windows, had at first doubted what they saw. Had the Boche returned? Whose tanks were these? But slowly the news spread and they emerged from their cellars and poured into the streets, singing and cheering. The tanks were French!

Sibyl watched as the overjoyed people ripped banners and flags bearing the swastika from the town hall and all the buildings; she smiled to see them trampling over discarded swastika flags, hundreds and thousands of them. Soldiers of the Free French marched by, now and then grabbing a girl and hugging her and dancing with her, and singing, and cheering, and more singing; bottles of Alsatian wine passed from hand to hand, lips to lips. Bells from all the churches rang out in joy; people, strangers, clutched each other, danced. Someone grabbed Sibyl and swung her around. She smiled; at last, she laughed.

Later, they watched as a group of citizens walked the streets and wrenched the German road signs from the walls; and nailed new French signs at every street corner; obviously improvised, painted on wooden slats until proper signs could be made. She watched as the hated Gerechtigkeitsgasse sign was torn from the wall of her own lane, and the new sign Rue des Géraniums nailed on in its stead.

On February 5th the last of Colmar’s German troops retreated over the Neuf-Brisach bridge, the bridge Jacques had tried and failed to demolish. Once the Boche reached the other side they blew up the bridge themselves.

On February 9th, further north from Colmar, the last German forces retreated over the Chalampé bridge. That bridge, too, they bombed behind them. It was the final act in the drama of the annexation of Alsace.

The Allies crossed the Rhine anyway. On March 7, 1945, US forces captured the railway bridge at Remagen, which German troops had tried, but failed to destroy, one of very few bridges across the Rhine still standing. And it enabled thousands of Allied troops to cross the river and make their way east, to the discovery of horrors that equalled those of war.

---

‘My darling,’ said Margaux when Sibyl finally turned up on her doorstep. ‘What took you so long?’

She released the woman she regarded as a daughter. Sibyl shrugged, smiled; she still struggled with words. But then Margaux was Margaux again, talking ninteen to the dozen and rustling up a hearty stew.

‘The last of the rabbits,’ she said. ‘It’s a good thing the war is over. Excellent timing.’

She glanced up at the clock.

‘They will be in soon, and starving,’ she said. ‘They are all clearing the snow over at Madame Boucher’s. They can’t wait to see you.’

‘Who are they?’ asked Sibyl, already weary – and wary. ‘Is Jacques among them? Is he coming?’ She couldn’t face Jacques. Not yet, and not now, with others around. Maybe never. Margaux made it sound as if an entire village was about to descend on them.

‘No, not Jacques. Jacques is very busy these days. But – well, you’ll see!’

She saw. They came, and among them were three unexpected faces, two familiar, one quite new.

‘Maxence!’ cried Sibyl, throwing her arms around Jacques’ father, but then, ‘Marie-Claire! Oh Marie-Claire! How wonderful to see you!’

Marie-Claire came forward and hugged her.

‘I am a widow now. And my mother has finally forgiven me.’

‘Yes. She has paid penance enough. A daughter is always a daughter,’ said Margaux.

A stranger came forward, holding out his hand in greeting, a man of unbearable thinness, his eyes sunken into the hollows of skeletal cheeks, clothes hanging on to a basic framework of bones.

‘Meet Hanner,’ said Margaux. ‘Hanner Koch. He is Victoire’s protégé, one of the waifs and strays she is always collecting – she takes after me in that. But this one is German.’

‘I have heard all about you,’ said Hanner in broken French, ‘and I could not wait to meet you. I was hiding in the forests and this kind girl found me.’

‘Hiding in the forests? In this weather?’ She spoke German; his French was terrible.

‘Well – someone helped me. He refused to speak German even though I think he understood me. He only spoke French. He hid me in a castle and then led me through the forest to a kind of wooden hut. There was a little stove, and logs. And dried fish. And then Victoire here found me. The man brought her. She is his sister.’

He placed an arm around Victoire and pulled her forward.

‘Il est beau, n’est pas?’ said Victoire, planting a kiss on his stubbly cheek, and indeed, the deserter, for that was what he was, showed signs of rugged handsomeness once he was fed back to health. Hanner obviously had a story to tell, one of survival and rebellion. She would hear all these stories – in time.

‘Lucien is alive,’ said Margaux then. ‘He is in a prisoner of war camp in Germany but will soon be released. And Maxence and I are to be married. Jean-Pierre has finally filed for divorce – he wants to marry his mistress, who is now a rich widow. It is complicated but we will get there in the end. And then Maxence will recover the vineyard he once lost, and we will run the vineyard as partners.’

Hiding behind Maxence was a diminutive person Sibyl had not noticed at first; a woman. She came forward, holding out her hand; in her other hand was that of a child.

‘I want to thank you,’ said Grete, ‘for arranging for my rescue. Yvonne and I are now safe but we were in grave danger. We had nothing to do with that bombing, nothing!’

‘I know that,’ said Sibyl, as she hugged her. ‘But it was not me who arranged your rescue. It must have been Jacques.’

‘I have heard of this Jacques,’ said Grete, ‘But I have not met him yet. I look forward to doing so. He is quite famous now – a hero of France.’

‘I know.’

There was one more person to greet. Elena, who had kept to the back of the room as Sibyl was welcomed. Finally she came forward, arms held out, and Sibyl fell against her with a sigh of deep satisfaction.

‘We must talk later,’ Elena whispered into her ear.

---

After dinner they talked, just the three of them, Sibyl, Elena and Margaux.

‘Acrobat says we must return as soon as possible,’ said Elena. ‘He will send a plane for us. The trouble is the landing field is deep in snow. As soon as we have cleared it we must get ready to be picked up.’

‘But I don’t want to go back!’ cried Sibyl, ‘I need to stay here!’

‘You must, we must. It’s a matter of demobilisation. Our job is over; we need to be officially signed off. Official Secrets Act, thanks for your sacrifice, and all that. Our work is done.’

‘Then I will go and come back. It’s not nearly done for me!’

‘You mean…Jacques?’

‘Among other things. But Jacques – Margaux, it will take time before I can face Jacques again and we can both digest what has happened, and talk. It’s not easy. I would prefer – to wait.’

‘Wait for what? The sooner you put the past behind you the better, Sibyl. That episode with your German soldier – it was an aberration. It was not real.’

‘It was very real, for me.’

‘I’m not going to argue with you, Sibyl. You are adult and must know what you are doing.’

‘I do. I’ve already spoken to someone from the Red Cross. I am going to volunteer with them, as a nurse. Go with them into Germany. The war is not yet over. There is work to be done.’

‘Ah, that’s a good idea. It will help you to help others, I think. Very good…and…oh! But I heard there was a will? He left you everything? Is that the real reason you want to return? Are you going to claim your inheritance? Will his parents contest it?’

‘I am not that mercenary.’ Sibyl looked straight into Margaux’s eyes. ‘I told you this before, Margaux. I have no legal right to anything he might leave me. His will – well, he left it all to Marlene Schuster, as I told you, who does not exist, for she is an alias of Jeanne Dauguet, who is dead. I am not going to take what is not rightly mine.’

‘Nobody need know that you are not Jeanne Dauguet. And besides…I’m sure a good lawyer could make the argument that it is YOU he loved and left everything to, not some ghost.’

‘It’s possible. But I would never make such a claim, or fight such a battle. It wouldn’t be right.’

Margaux shrugged. ‘If you say so.’

An awkward silence fell between them, filled by a name they all seemed reluctant to mention; a name that kept cropping up only to be dismissed again. As if it didn’t matter. Though they all knew it did. Finally Sibyl found the courage to speak it.

‘So – Jacques? You said he’s busy? Busy doing what?’

The back door blew open with a gust of cold air. And there he stood.

‘Speak of the devil,’ said Jacques, and swept Sibyl into his arms.

Margaux and Elena melted discreetly into the parlour. Jacques rubbed his hands together, blew on them to warm them. ‘It is freezing outside,’ he said.

‘Shall I make you a tisane? It will warm you.’

‘You will warm me,’ said Jacques. He sat down at a kitchen chair and pulled Sibyl onto his lap. A ridiculous shyness overcame her. She had no words, could not look at him.

‘Look at me!’

She did. But then she stood up and put a kettle on the stove to boil water for his tisane.

‘It’s all right, Sibi. I know. You did a job. Everything you did was right.’

‘You don’t know,’ she whispered as she opened a cupboard for a mug. ‘It’s not fair. Jacques, not fair to you. Everything has changed. Our hopes, our promises – I have betrayed everything. I am going to volunteer with the Red Cross. I am going to work in Germany.’

‘Ha! Since when do you owe the Germans your allegiance?’

‘Because I – because…’

‘It is over, Sibi. The war is over. Last year we promised each other that when the war was over, our life would begin.’

‘Everything has changed. I have changed. You have changed. I must find a different future. There is so much work to be done. There are tasks to be done. The concentration camps in Germany…’

‘Sibi, there is work to be done everywhere. Alsace is in ruins. I am helping to build it up again. People are desperate, homeless, starving, sick. Why would you run off to work in Germany, when Alsace is bleeding?’

Guilt, she wanted to say. Because I misled a good German and I am responsible for his death. But she could not say it. Not to Jacques. Instead, she said:

‘It’s a long story, Jacques, and I will tell you one day. But not today.’

She placed herbs in Margaux’s old cracked teapot. She filled it with hot water.

‘I don’t want to hear your story. Ever. It is over. It has all been a terrible nightmare and we all did things that we’d never have done if not for one insane tyrant. He has destroyed Europe, Sibi. Will you let him destroy your life as well? I remember so well that day when you dropped from the sky. I remember the almost full moon, the whiteness of your parachute, and then the joy that lit your eyes when you recognised me. You brought goodness with you; I felt it, I knew it, that night. Will you let that tyrant destroy that goodness? We must move on, Sibi, away from destruction. We must heal what has been destroyed. You and me. We must stand up in the middle of these ruins and find healing – for ourselves and for the world around us.’

‘Here is your tisane.’ She placed a steaming cup on the table before him. He cupped it with his hands. Then he let go, pulled her to his lap, placed her hands around the cup, and his around hers. He held her close. Spoke so softly she could hardly hear his voice. Slowly, gently, hesitantly and at first his voice cracked as he spoke, as if he himself was cracked, deep inside; but with every word strength gathered and filled the words, until at last they became triumphant.

‘We Alsatian winemakers have a saying. In a year when a war begins, the wine is bad. It is a reflection of the life outside, Sibi, a mirror of the evil in the world. The wine is bad and our hearts are filled with fear and loathing. But in a year when a war ends, the wine is good, and our hearts are filled with goodness. This will be a good year.’