He took a deep breath. However grim, whatever she was about to tell him, it was long over now. The horror belonged in the past.

‘Go on,’ he said, but steeling himself.

‘It was a beautiful day. Later, I remember thinking how wrong it was, that something so terrible should happen on a morning of such light, such blue skies.

‘My family was lucky. We were visiting friends on the other side of the mountains. We had set off early, at dawn, to make our way back to the village. The mist still hung low in the valley. The sun was not yet high in the sky. On the outskirts, where the woods come down right to the village, we saw a boy, a friend of my brother, running. He said soldiers had been seen, a thin line of men making their steady way towards us. He said . . .’

Freddie could not help himself. ‘What? What did he say?’

‘That they were burning the villages of the lower valley,’ she said. ‘He said men, women and children had been cut down where they stood.

‘Without delay, we hurried to the square. All was uproar. People were crying, shouting. Some wanted to stay, refusing to believe that the threat was real. Others wanted to defend our village against any attack. Others again, who had seen the terror, knew that to stay would be to sign your own death warrant.

‘The Marty sisters said they were too old to be driven from their homes again. They refused to leave. A young couple, married but a week, had gone out early and had not returned. Some of the men chose to stay. To cause a diversion, if need be, to stop the soldiers from seeing our tracks into the mountains. Peter Galy, Michel Auty and his sons, William and Paul, also stayed.’

‘I’m surprised there were so many men left,’ Freddie said. ‘Hadn’t all the men of fighting age been called up?’

‘It was different here.’

He had a prickling feeling at the base of his spine. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but what she said didn’t make sense. He had passed monuments to the dead in every village, every town. In the graveyards of every church, there were lists of the fallen - fathers, sons, friends, brothers. All the men had gone.

But before he could ask her another question, she was talking again.

‘There was only enough time to gather what we could carry on our backs and leave. A loaf of bread, wine, blankets for the cold mountain nights, my father’s ink and paper.

As the sun rose in the sky, my parents, my brother and I joined those heading up into the woods. My brother was ten then. He was a weak boy, thin and often ill, but so strong in spirit. Brave.

‘We travelled by foot. We could not risk taking the animals, the cart, for fear the tracks would give us away. The mules, the sheep, the goats, these too we left behind. We dared to hope they would be there when we returned.’

Freddie frowned. ‘But where did you go? There must have been so many of you.’

She looked at him for a moment, as if surprised he needed to ask such a question.

‘There are caves within these mountains, hidden from view.’

‘Enough to provide shelter for an entire village?’

She nodded. ‘Some caves are small and linked by narrow tunnels. In other places, there are underground cities within the mountains - tunnels, caves, hidden places. Each family found somewhere to rest.’ She paused. ‘Besides, we did not think we would be there long.’

Questions were nagging at Freddie. So many things did not add up or fit with what he knew.

‘But if you knew where the caves were, how did the soldiers not hear of them? Someone must have talked? Someone always does.’

She shook her head. ‘They had not been used for many years before that.’

He frowned again thinking how odd it was she gave the impression of so much time passing. The war had begun in 1914 and run its grim course until 1918. They were terrible years certainly, but only four years in all.

Her voice cut in to his thought. ‘The soldiers knew we could not have gone far. They searched and searched. The cave in which we found shelter was some way up the highest peak. Ancient roots from the old trees formed steps in the ground. The only way in or out was a small opening in the mountain. From below, it looked like a half moon cut into the rock face, just a semicircle of stone. It did not appear to lead anywhere and seemed like a dead-end.’

‘So you lived there for days? Weeks?’

‘Longer than that. Spring tipped into summer. Later, the leaves turned gold on the trees. Still they did not find us. Later, the snows came. We thought they would leave, but they did not. They kept watch.’

‘Your brother,’ he said. ‘How did he cope with the winter?’

‘He did not,’ she said quietly. ‘The cold was in his bones, in his chest. He needed fresh air and sunlight and good food, the very things we could not give him.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘He never complained. Even when he was suffering, he bore it bravely.’

Grief turned her brown eyes to black.

‘I could not save him,’ she said.