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about.’
    ‘Madame, I must tell you …’
    ‘Inspector, there’s nothing you or any of the others can tell me that I don’t already know. You’ve received your little black coffin. The post was good, n’est-ce pas ? You’ll get my instructions soon enough.’
    I hang up. I stand there shaking so hard I can’t control myself and am afraid I’m going to piss, but then a hand gently touches my shoulder. Startled, I defiantly turn, but it’s only my nurse who says, ‘Madame, what have you done?’
    ‘Nothing! Can’t you see that I’ve done nothing!’
    It’s exactly the answer I first gave them.

2
    My refusal to discuss what happened today has put them all on edge. Even though there are grey spots on my lungs and the x-rays aren’t good, Dr. Zimmermann has asked that I think about leaving the clinic if I can’t put my total trust in them.
    Dr. Morganfeld is more cautious. After all, he’s Jewish—the juice and diet man—one of the lucky ones who got out of Austria in 1937, so he has, understandably, a monstrous feeling of guilt to overcome.
    Dr. Laurier is a woman whose grandparents lived in a little place called Oradure-sur-Glane until the Das Reich, the Second Panzer Division of the Waffen SS, came and destroyed everything. She’s been home to see it, is a specialist in such matters, the only psychiatrist at the clinic, but is still suffering to cope. It’s Dr. Laurier who has asked the others to allow me to decide what’s best for me and who has said, in the privacy of the corridor, ‘I’ll get you across the frontier if you wish.’
    You see, I have no papers, and if you have no name, only a number, you haven’t got a chance.
    ‘Will you really do that for me?’
    ‘Yes, of course. I’ll ask to accompany you tomorrow on your trip into the mountains. I’ll simply say we talked it over and you decided not to come back.’
    I think she knows whomever I telephoned will start to look for me, and that it would be best if I went into hiding.
    ‘I can let you have some money,’ she says. ‘Swiss francs. Good hard cash.’
    ‘You should have been with us, Doctor. We could have used you.’
    ‘It’s not going to be easy. Things have changed in France. There’s a terrible bitterness. Brother is now after brother.’
    She’s so sensitive, she would never have made it through the camps. ‘Would you send this telegram to Dr. André de Verville, Apartment 7, 34 boulevard de Beauséjour, Paris? If you could do that after I’ve left the clinic, so much the better.’
    I hand her the slip of paper on which is written, André, Michèle has asked that you remember how it was .
    ‘And the sender?’
    She still hopes I’ll confide in her.
    ‘Put something down,’ she says. ‘It’ll be easier that way.’
    More information. ‘Just sign it “Simone.” He’ll know who it’s from.’
    ‘Why won’t you tell us your real name?’
    ‘I can’t. Not yet. Not until I’ve remembered it.’
    Everything I own is packed into one small brown cardboard suitcase. The shoes they gave me after the camps, the skirt, blouse, coat—all such things have been neatly placed in readiness. I won’t sleep tonight. The pills they’ve given me have been flushed down the toilet. In the privacy of my room, even in its darkness, I will remember while there’s still time.
    One spiralling leaf fell from a golden beech, and then another and another. In the silence of the forest, the sound of leaves breaking away and coming to rest was all around me. Poland had been utterly smashed in less than fifteen days. Now, virtually the whole of the German army sat on our border and those of Belgium and Holland. When would it come, the invasion? When would the posturing stop?
    I remember that I had a feeling I must do something, but there was also a lethargy. I’d been betrayed by my husband’s infidelity with my sister, was mixed up and still trying to sort things out. Then, too, there was a latent danger, a frustration at the