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A hand-delivered letter arrived for Lizzie on the breakfast tray.

Jack and Lizzie had agreed it was less suspicious if a woman sent notes to her as if they were friends arranging to meet, in case a letter was intercepted.

One never knew in wartime who might be monitoring the mail, even if a boy from the village delivered it.

After the housekeeper left the dining room, Lizzie slit it open with Luc’s correspondence knife, and after she scanned the brief note, she raised her eyes to Jack.

‘Our friend is in the woods,’ she said carefully, referring to Lev but not saying his name in front of Luc.

‘It’s time, then,’ said Luc, lowering his newspaper. ‘How do you want to handle it?’

Jack drained his coffee and turned to face his uncle. ‘Well, we can’t risk smuggling them in during the day. We’ll have to wait until tonight under cover of darkness.’

Luc agreed, ‘There are too many workers from the village roaming around the vineyards at this time of year.’

‘What else does the note say?’ Jack asked Lizzie.

She passed it to him. ‘Some kind of coded message which I presume is to tell us where they are hiding exactly.’

Jack read Marguerite’s note aloud. ‘I’ll meet you in the house in the woods.’

A puzzled expression clouded Jack’s face as he read the words again so Luc could hear. ‘Mean anything to you?’ he asked. ‘How can we know which house?’

Luc nodded. ‘Yes, of course. There are no houses in the woods except for a derelict shack. Only locals would know that, so whoever sent you the note is counting on you asking someone who knows the terrain.’

‘Makes sense,’ Lizzie said. ‘Our contact knows we’re your relatives, so it’s not a terribly big stretch for us to ask you a question like that.’

‘You’d better organise some food to keep them going until we can bring them in tonight. Ask Suzanne for a picnic basket for four. Tell her you’re meeting some friends.’

They thanked Luc and excused themselves from the table, going straight upstairs to the privacy of their rooms to discuss their next move.

‘What else do we need to take for them, apart from food and drink?’ Lizzie asked.

‘There’s no point taking them a change of clothes without knowing their size, and they won’t be cold in this weather. They’ll be wanting to sleep, I imagine, after walking through the night.’

Suzanne prepared them a basket which had become something of a habit lately, so it wasn’t suspicious at all. When Jack returned from working in the vineyards, they often explored areas of the vast estate and took a picnic for lunch.

Most mornings before the blistering heat of the day bore down on them, Lizzie rose early and accompanied Jack or stayed at the house and helped Suzanne.

She was delighted to discover they grew abundant crops of fruits in the fields surrounding the vineyards.

There were cherries, peaches, plums, apricots, melons, raspberries and strawberries which needed picking.

There was plenty to do at the chateau and although it wasn’t intelligence work, it passed the time in between operations and gave weight to her cover story of being a new wife who had come along to keep her husband company.

The fruit on the trees in the fragrant orchard wouldn’t be ripe until later in the summer, but Suzanne showed her how to make jams from the buckets of fruits they picked in the fields.

Lizzie also spent time in the large kitchen, making pies just like she had loved to do with her grandmother in Jersey.

Rolling the pastry made her nostalgic for her childhood, when she would stand on a box next to her nan and help her fill pies and crumbles with summer fruits mixture.

A shadow crossed her mind when she thought of her grandparents in Jersey.

She wondered if her parents had received another message from them yet.

Lizzie felt helpless when she thought of them, and she pushed the thoughts away.

She would focus on what she could do right now.

Anything else only made her sad and afraid.

Jack and Lizzie crossed the courtyard and cut through the field that was the quickest way to the woods.

They decided to give the airmen some time to rest, and it wasn’t until almost 4 p.m. they glimpsed the outline of a small shack through the trees.

They followed the directions of Luc’s hand-drawn map, and after crossing a small brook by stepping across large uneven stones, they approached the shack.

Before they could reach the door, Lev appeared from around the back, brandishing a rifle.

Jack whistled to him. ‘We come in peace, friend.’

Lev lowered the rifle and something akin to a smile crossed his mouth. He was a serious man, and Lizzie noticed he rarely smiled or showed emotion. She wondered if he was so reserved because of the horrors he had witnessed in recent years, or if that was his nature.

They stood in a sun dappled spot beneath a patchy canopy of trees. Lev confirmed there were two airmen, and they were sleeping.

‘One of them is injured. I went home to get some medical stuff and patched him up as best I could, but he needs a doctor.’

‘What type of injury?’ Jack asked.

‘Gunshot wound. A farmer shot him after he disturbed them sleeping in his barn. They escaped, but he was hit. He’s been bleeding and is hot and delirious, so my guess is he has an infection.’

‘He will need proper treatment,’ Jack said. ‘We can’t take him to the hospital, or the authorities will be onto us in no time.’

‘They only had one safe house on the way, so they had to hide in fields or take a chance in someone’s barn for most of the journey.’

‘Let’s see what we can do about that for the next round. There must be more sympathetic farmers we can prevail upon, even if we must make it worth their while.’

Lev said, ‘I’ll speak to the others and see who we can contact.’

Lev and Lizzie stayed under the shelter of the trees, and she offered him a sandwich, which he accepted gratefully and devoured.

‘We brought food for the airmen,’ she said, passing the picnic basket to Lev.

‘Thank you. I don’t think the injured one will be able to eat, but the other is hungry. What’s the plan for taking them to the chateau?’

They spoke in whispers, constantly aware that even the trees might have ears.

The summer winds snatched their words so they could barely hear each other.

Lizzie told Lev what they had planned. He was to escort the airmen to a meeting point near the chateau at an agreed time that night, and they would be there to meet them and smuggle them into the cellars.

‘He’s too badly hurt to walk alone, but I think we can manage his weight and pull him along between us.’

Jack reappeared and said to Lizzie, ‘They are both British. One’s from London and the other from Scotland. Lev’s right though, the Scot is in a bad way. I’ll have to speak to Luc about finding a doctor we can trust.’

They left as suddenly as they had come and slipped back into the grounds of the chateau with the picnic basket that Lev had emptied and returned to them.

They found Luc reading in the library.

After pondering briefly, glasses in hand, he said, ‘I have a good doctor in the village. I’ll get a message to him this afternoon and see if he will help us.’

‘Do you trust him?’ Jack asked.

Luc nodded. ‘I do. My only hesitation is that he may be under surveillance, or perhaps not even be living at home anymore.’

‘Why would that be?’ Lizzie asked, screwing up her forehead.

‘He’s a Jew,’ Luc said. ‘Like you heard when you were questioned by the policeman soon after you arrived, the Jews never quite know who is going to be under suspicion next. He’s been our family doctor for years, but he likely has had his licence revoked under the latest statutes.’

‘How awful,’ Lizzie said. ‘You’d think they’d want all the experienced doctors they could get in wartime.’

‘You would, but unfortunately prejudice has no logic, and the authorities here are hellbent on doing the Nazis’ bidding, which, as you pointed out, involves destroying Jewish livelihoods and driving them away until France is ‘cleansed’.

The ominous statement rang in the air like a death toll, and Lizzie immediately thought of Hannah and Lev. How long would these brave souls keep risking their lives to get others out, instead of escaping themselves and getting to safety?

Lizzie was subdued as she sat in the shade of the orchard, trying to read a French novel after Jack had gone to inspect the cellars.

They had agreed it was best not to attract attention by both going, so she had stayed behind, but her mind wouldn’t focus on the story, and she kept reading the same words over again, until she gave up and put the book down.

She lay back on the blanket and closed her eyes, trying to rest, but her mind whirled with frantic thoughts.

What if the airmen were intercepted before they reached the chateau tonight?

What if they were caught as they went to meet them?

Lizzie knew there were informants all around, and just because they hadn’t met anyone on the way to the shack didn’t mean no one had watched Lev and the airmen make their way to the woods.

Lev had explained how he’d got them there. They were dressed in civilian clothes, so they blended in well enough, disguised as casual labourers. They had skirted around the city and the village and come the back way to the woods. The chances were they hadn’t been spotted, and they had seen no one.

The Free Zone was an eclectic mix of families, wounded veterans, Frenchmen trying to rebuild their lives after returning from the war, fleeing Jews, communists, and other races and minorities who weren’t welcome in Nazi-occupied Europe.

Lev told her a lot were making plans to leave France before it was too late.

Their contact had helped many escapees cross the Pyrenees during the past few months.

Lizzie enquired whether Lev had met the mysterious man in St. Girons. He said he hadn’t, but Marguerite had made arrangements for some of his friends to leave via that route.

‘What about your parents and siblings, Lev?’ Lizzie asked. ‘Don’t they wish to leave?’

Lev sighed. ‘I’m working on it. My parents are as stubborn as mules and won’t leave without me.

I have told them I cannot leave now. There is too much to do here.

My siblings are considering it, but can’t bring themselves to abandon our parents, so it’s a knock-on effect.

I have papers ready for them as soon as they give me the nod. ’

Lizzie’s chest tightened as he told her about his family. Would it really be a matter of life or death if they didn’t leave, or would the Allies invade in time to stop this madness before it went any further?

She lay on the blanket, still trying to drift off to sleep because they would have a late night, but her mind was too full.

They received reports at the SOE and repeatedly discussed a possible invasion, but it was never the right time and was always pushed into the future.

It was approaching two years since Germany invaded Poland and Britain declared war.

What had seemed initially like something that would be over in no time, had dragged on much longer than anyone had predicted.

Lizzie sat bolt upright when she heard the crack of a twig.

Jack appeared beneath an apple tree and waved to her before crossing the orchard and sitting next to her in the shade.

‘How did it go?’ she asked.

‘Good. Luc was in there waiting for me and showed me a hidden cellar at the back where they can hide. He said when the Germans first invaded, many of the vintners built false walls to hide their best wines from Nazi plundering. We’ve arranged a place for them to sleep and will take some stuff in for them. ’

Dinner time came quickly, but Lizzie could barely swallow the food. Such was the tension at the table. Luc kept glancing at the clock, and when they retired outside as usual to the terrace, Jack chain-smoked until Lizzie had to move away so she could catch her breath.

She prayed that by tonight, the airmen would be safely hidden in the secret cellar.

But a voice kept taunting her. What if it all goes wrong?

They could find themselves spending the night in a Vichy jail, not in their comfortable bedroom overlooking the Garonne valley.