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She paused. It was one thing to have admitted to herself that she loved him. It would be an entirely different thing to admit it to him. And it wasn’t a step she was sure she would ever be able – or would ever want – to take. She chose to acknowledge her confusion instead.

‘You once divided people into good and bad when those divisions didn’t exist. Perhaps I’ve done a similar thing with you, without acknowledging that the truth may be a little more complicated. You’ve walked both sides of that line. I know now that I don’t hate you?—’

‘But you can’t forgive me, and you don’t know if you want to try.’ Pascal didn’t smile, but his face suddenly looked less weary. ‘You don’t hate me, and that’s better than I hoped for. That feels like more than I deserve, and I’m grateful you said it, so thank you.’

There was barely a hand’s breadth between them on the path. She could smell the hay on his shirt from the previous day’s harvest. She could hear the love lying thick as a winter snowfall in his voice.

I’ll never really come home until I find some way back to him.

The realisation came from nowhere and hit hard.

She didn’t know what that pathway looked like.

She knew it couldn’t involve reaching for his hand, which would have been the simplest way once upon a time.

But she was certain this time that she didn’t want to completely ignore the shift in her heart.

So she offered him something of her life since they’d lost each other instead.

‘I fought, in battles too. I was a partisan. I fought in the ghetto in Warsaw when it rose up against the Nazis, not because I was in there as a prisoner but because that was what I chose to go and do. And I fought in the battle against them for the city the following year. I’ve seen things and done things my mind wants to run away from.

And – if I’m honest – I don’t yet know what all the killing and suffering I’ve seen, and caused, has turned me into.

I don’t know how much of the girl who once roamed the mountains and meadows here is left. ’

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d spoken so honestly about her feelings.

Not since her mother had vanished, and perhaps not then – their last conversations had been too clouded by fear of the future for Noemi to speak freely.

Certainly not with Matthias – most of their driving force had been rooted in survival, not in worrying about what kind of people they might become if the fighting was ever done.

And for all she’d hoped their bond would deepen, they’d never reached the level of understanding she’d forged with Pascal.

Too many pieces of their hearts had stayed closed to each other.

Which was my doing as much as his. We met in a world where trust had gone, and that coloured who we could be.

She glanced up. Pascal was looking away from her, out towards the mountain ridges where their bond had once been unbreakable, where their minds and bodies had worked as one.

His face was so clouded she knew exactly what he was seeing.

She could picture the scene he was watching: the two of them scrambling together across the ice and the snow, linked by a rope and by trust.

Perhaps nobody will ever know me like he did. Perhaps that’s another part of me that will always be lost.

The thought of walking on through the world without ever again finding such a deep-rooted tie to another human being was terrifying. She didn’t want to face it.

Because, despite everything, I want him.

The urge to tell him that, for good and for ill, was suddenly overwhelming. She began to say, ‘Pascal, I…’ with no idea where I was heading. She didn’t get a chance to find out.

‘The town’s up, look. Maybe the game is up too.’

Some noise she’d missed had jerked Pascal out of the memories he’d tumbled into.

He pointed down the slope to the market square.

It was filling up, people running in all directions.

Every person who arrived was gesticulating to the next.

And then Viktor was suddenly there, his entourage running in his wake.

The posters rapidly turned into confetti.

‘Get back to the farmhouse, Noemi. Pretend you never left your bed and get Frau Hammerl to lie for you if necessary. He’s no fool; he’ll know who’s behind this, and – if your plan fails and the Americans don’t haul him in quickly for questioning – he’ll make you pay.

Whatever else comes out of this, I can’t stand by and let him hurt you again. ’

She didn’t need to be told twice. She didn’t want to put Pascal at risk of taking any kind of action that would rebound on him.

She ran down the pathway without looking back.

But she wasn’t afraid. Someone would run to the Americans with a poster before they were all torn up and ruined – there was always somebody desperate to be arm in arm with the winning side.

And the Americans would come for Viktor before he came for her – she could feel the certainty of that as strongly as she could feel the rising sun’s warmth kissing her skin.

Viktor’s going to be made to pay for what he did, not me. He’s finally going to be forced to face who he is.

She felt lighter than she’d felt for years as she flew through the empty kitchen to her bed.