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‘I have had reports that a wireless signal has been picked up in this area,’ Major Hartmann told them calmly. ‘My men have been ordered to conduct a search. You will
cooperate.’

It was an order, not a question. Raoul, clenching his hands, clearly felt helpless and Beth’s heart was beating rapidly. But, bravely, she decided it was time to put her acting skills to
the test. Twisting one of her plaits around her finger, she stepped a little closer to Kurt Hartmann, but not close enough to appear suggestive. She attempted to play the innocent, asking the sort
of questions that a puzzled, guiltless fifteen-year-old might pose.

‘What are you looking for?’ Behind her, she could feel Raoul’s fear, but she smiled up at Kurt.

‘A wireless,’ he said, a little impatiently.

‘Like you can listen to music and that?’ Before he could answer she turned to Raoul. ‘We haven’t got a wireless, have we, Uncle?’ She turned back to face the
officer again. ‘We had one in Boulogne-Billancourt. But we lost it.’

Kurt frowned. ‘You said,’ he said shortly. ‘In the bombing.’

‘I miss it. I used to love listening to the music.’

‘It’s not that sort of wireless,’ Kurt said. ‘It’s a wireless transmitter for sending and receiving messages.’

Beth blinked at him. ‘Who to?’

‘The enemy.’

Beth laughed. ‘Why would any of us want to send messages to you?’

‘Not us, you silly girl. To
our
enemies. The British – the Free French.’

‘Oh!’ Beth pretended to be taking this in. Then she nodded as if beginning to understand. ‘Yes, I see what you mean. But – but what sort of messages?’

Kurt shrugged. ‘About British airmen getting back home if they have parachuted out of a damaged aircraft, about dropping supplies – arms mostly.’

Beth gasped and widened her eyes. ‘Are they doing that?’

Kurt stared at her for a moment and she could see that he was wondering if she really was that stupid. He gave a swift nod as his troops appeared from the house and the outbuildings and gathered
in the yard once more.

‘Nothing, Major,’ one young soldier reported.

‘Very well.’ As the soldiers climbed back into the lorry, Kurt said softly, ‘We know there is a circuit operating in this area and we mean to find it.’ Now he stared
directly at Raoul. ‘Where is your son, Herr Détange?’

‘My – son?’ For a moment the older man hesitated and Beth was so afraid he was going to say something careless. But Raoul shrugged and murmured, ‘I only wish I knew,
Major Hartmann.’ And he dropped his head as if mourning the possible loss of his son.

‘I see,’ Kurt Hartmann said and added, as he turned away, ‘Well, if you do hear anything from him, it would be better for you, your wife and Leonie here, if you were to tell
us.’

As the lorry drew out of the yard, Beth heaved a sigh, but it was not one of relief. ‘We must get word to Antoine,’ she said.

‘He’ll be here tonight, no doubt with a message he wants you to send.’

‘They missed finding the wireless, thank goodness. But perhaps I’d better move it.’

‘No, no, leave it where it is. It’s in the best place.’

‘But we were told to move to different places when we transmit. That way it’s harder for them to pick up the signals. They already know there’s one around here somewhere. I
just want to protect you and Aunt Marthe.’

Raoul put his hand on her slim shoulder and his voice was none too steady as he said, ‘You’re a brave girl, Leonie. A very brave girl. But you mustn’t worry about us. We both
knew what we were getting into from the very start when we offered to help. We’ve just got to carry on until we’ve driven these – these bastards from our land and you can go back
to your family.’

Beth said nothing as a moment of homesickness threatened to overwhelm her. She was very afraid it was going to be a long time before that could happen.

When Jessie heard that not one of Edie’s family – or Lil’s, for that matter – were coming home for the fourth Christmas of the war, she insisted that
they should all celebrate at her home. ‘You do it every year, Edie, it’s time you had a break.’

‘Me and Lil do it together, Jessie. It’s no trouble, really.’

‘Well, me and Harry want you to come to us this year. Lil, too, of course. And,’ she laughed, ‘we’ll even ask Norma, though I have my doubts that she’ll come if
it’s me doing the asking.’

‘What about Ursula? Shirley’s friend? She’s been coming to us at Christmas and Easter. Poor lass is all alone. Shirley said the woman she lodges with is a real misery and
always disappears to relatives at holiday times, leaving Ursula on her own.’

‘Of course she can come. The more the merrier.’

And so for the first time in her married life, Edie didn’t spend Christmas in her own home. Just to Lil, for she didn’t want to upset Jessie, she said, ‘I’m all at sixes
and sevens. I’m so used to us planning Christmas together, I just don’t know what to do with myself.’

‘There’re two things you can do, Edie,’ Lil said firmly. ‘For a start, you can help me get this net finished before Christmas and then we can put some extra hours in at
the Centre.’

Jessie had spared no expense in order to do everything that rationing and shortages would allow to feed her guests.

‘Oh, you’ve got it looking lovely, Jessie,’ Edie enthused as she gazed around Jessie’s front room. A bright fire burned in the grate – Jessie and Harry must have
gone without fires for a while to save the coal for today, Edie thought. Paper chains were looped across the room whilst white-painted pine cones nestled in amongst an arrangement of holly
branches. Jessie had even managed to find a small piece of mistletoe. Edie’s glance took in the table, laid with Jessie’s best china, glassware and table decorations. ‘Oh, do
look, Lil. However have you managed to get that holly looking as if it’s got frost on its leaves, Jessie?’

‘It was a Ministry of Food suggestion, would you believe? If you dip the greenery in a strong solution of Epsom salts, when it dries, it looks just like frost.’

‘How imaginative,’ Lil murmured, marvelling once more at Jessie’s ingenuity. Not only was Edie’s sister always to able to ‘make something out of nothing’ in
clothes, but she could also conjure up all sorts of handicrafts and she was inventive too. Instead of a bowl of fruit on the sideboard, there were carrots, beetroot and parsley making a colourful
display that could still be eaten.

‘You’re so clever, Jessie,’ Lil said sincerely and though Jessie brushed aside the compliment, the pink tinge to her cheeks told them that she was gratified by their
praise.

‘And what do you all want to do this afternoon?’ Jessie said as she served the Christmas pudding. ‘At least we won’t
have
to play charades.’ They all laughed
except Edie; she would have loved to have been forced to play charades because it would have meant that at least one of her family was home.

‘I reckon me and Archie will stay here in front of this nice fire and have a bit of a sleep,’ Harry said. ‘What do you say, Archie?’

‘Sounds like a good idea to me, Harry.’

Christmas dinner had been served in Jessie’s front room, using their Morrison shelter as a table, just as Edie did. Jessie had lit an inviting fire in the grate and the two men planned to
sit in the two armchairs beside it and talk and doze the afternoon away.

‘And you girls can have a good old gossip without us getting in the way.’

The meal over, the women cleared away and the guests insisted that they should do the washing-up in Jessie’s scullery. ‘You’ve done enough,’ they assured her. ‘That
was a lovely meal.’

‘I really liked the pudding, Jessie,’ Lil said. ‘It tasted a bit different to the one we make, didn’t it, Edie? Would you give me the recipe, Jessie?’

‘I’d like it too,’ Norma put in. ‘Because next year, you must all come to me.’

‘Next year!’ Edie exclaimed and added determinedly, ‘Oh, the war will be over by then, Norma, and everyone will be home.’

At White Gates Farm, the table groaned under the weight of food that Mrs Schofield had cleverly amassed. She hadn’t broken any of the regulations but on a farm there
were always ways to skirt the rationing. The two land army girls had gone home for three days but Ruth and Joe’s generosity had extended to including three airmen from the nearby RAF camp who
couldn’t get to their homes during the leave allowed. The company of the young men enlivened the day. They played board games with Reggie and Irene and entertained Tommy. One of them, a
married man with a son almost the same age as Tommy, couldn’t get enough of the little chap. They’d brought chocolate for him and Reggie and tobacco for Joe Schofield. And into
Ruth’s grateful hands they’d loaded some rationed foodstuffs that the farm didn’t produce.

As Christmas Day drew to a close, everyone declared it had been one of their happiest ever and Ruth retired to her bed, weary but elated that she had been able to give all those who were far
from their loved ones a good day; a day to remember.

Irene went to bed with the image in her mind of a handsome, dark-haired young pilot, who reminded her poignantly of Frank, dandling her son on his knee.

On the farm in France, it was a very different scene around the kitchen table. The Germans had taken almost everything that was edible for their Christmas feasting leaving the
Détanges with scarcely enough to eat, never mind celebrating the festive season.

‘Emile – I mean Antoine – won’t come,’ Raoul said softly. ‘He believes it’s a very dangerous time to visit. That’s when the Germans might spring a
surprise search, knowing that it’s a vulnerable time for families when they might feel compelled to come home.’

Surreptitiously, Marthe wiped her eyes but she smiled bravely. ‘But we have our niece staying with us, Raoul. We have family here.’

Beth touched the older woman’s hand in a gesture of gratitude for she, too, was missing not only her own family dreadfully, but also the handsome Frenchman too. Over the weeks they had
been working together under dangerous circumstances and had become very close. Emile’s dark brown eyes looked into hers, his expression not guarded like Kurt’s, for he knew her real
age. Beth knew that Emile was falling in love with her, and she with him, but also that the daily danger they lived in kept him from declaring his feelings for her. Those similar feelings that,
unfortunately, Kurt Hartmann did not have to hide.

Three nights after New Year’s Day, Beth woke suddenly in the middle of the night to the droning of a British bomber overhead, its engine sounding damaged; the aircraft
was in trouble. At once, she threw back the covers and began to dress hurriedly, pulling on trousers and thick jumpers. For a moment she thought the plane had flown on, but then there was a
terrific crash that rattled the windows. She hurried to look out and, in one of Raoul’s meadows, she saw flames leaping into the air. She winced. If there were any crew still on board, they
would not have survived such an inferno. But she must go to see. Perhaps the crew had bailed out and were somewhere nearby needing help. She opened her bedroom door and crept downstairs to find
both Raoul and Marthe already in the kitchen. The farmer was already dressed and pulling on his sturdy boots. His wife, with a shawl thrown over her nightgown, hurried between her pantry and the
table, spreading out what bit of food they had left, rousing the range fire to wakefulness and setting the kettle to boil. It looked to Beth as if they’d fallen swiftly into a well-rehearsed
routine, but it was the first time something like this had happened since her arrival.

‘What do we do?’ Beth whispered as if already she feared the Germans might be listening. Surely they could not have missed hearing such a noise; they would be here soon.

‘We go and see if we can find any survivors.’

‘What about the Germans?’

Raoul shrugged, almost nonchalantly. ‘If they come, they come. But if we can get to the airmen first . . .’ He stood up, ‘Come on. Let’s go.’

Jasper was already standing at the back door, his pink tongue lolling, his eyes bright and expectant. He knew he had work to do and when Raoul opened the back door, he raced out into the
night.

‘I didn’t see any parachutes, but then the plane was almost overhead by the time I woke up,’ Beth said softly as they hurried after the dog.

‘Don’t worry,’ Raoul said, sounding surprisingly calm. ‘If there’s anyone out there – at least within a reasonable distance – Jasper will find
them.’

They walked through the blackness, the land lit intermittently by a fitful moon. They had walked through one field and into the next, a ploughed field awaiting its spring wheat, when they heard
a soft bark. Even Jasper, it seemed, understood the need for quiet.

‘Where is he? I can’t see him.’

‘This way,’ Raoul murmured, unerring in his sense of direction.

Again, another bark, nearer this time and, within minutes, they saw a dark shape on the ground with Jasper standing guard. A parachute billowed out from the still form of the airman. Beth fell
to her knees beside him.

‘What – where . . . ?’ the young man began, disorientated by his fall. He was speaking in English.

‘It’s all right. We’re French. We’re here to help you. Are you hurt?’

‘I – don’t know,’ he said again in English, but he seemed to have understood her question even though she had spoken to him in French. She dare not give away her true
nationality yet, if at all. He tried to sit up, but the parachute cords still pulled at him.

‘Get it off him,’ Raoul instructed, ‘and I’ll bury it.’

Beth wondered why Raoul had grabbed a spade from outside the back door as they’d left the house. Now she understood. It was as if it had been standing there in readiness. Perhaps it had,
for the farmer seemed confident in his actions. He’d done this before, Beth was sure.

The airman, recovering swiftly now, released his parachute and sat up.

‘Can you stand?’ Beth asked as she hooked her arm under his and helped him up. ‘All right?’

‘I – think so. Doesn’t seem to be anything broken. I was just winded, I think.’ He looked around him. ‘Where are the others?’