I was always amazed when people were kind to us. - Patrick Modiano

We passed the Gardens and turned down Avenue de New York. There, under the embankment trees,I had the unpleasant sensation that I was dreaming.I had already lived my life and was just a ghost hovering in the tepid air of Saturday evening. Why try to renew ties which had been broken and look for paths that had been blocked off long ago? And the plump, moustachioed little man, walking beside me, hardly seemed real.

I shall never know how she spent her days, where she hid, in whose company she passed the winter months of her first escape, or the few weeks of spring when she escaped for the second time. That is her secret. A poor and precious secret which not even the executioners the decrees, the occupying authorities, the Depot, the barracks, the camps, history, time – everything that corrupts and destroys you- have been able to take away from her.

Perhaps it was one of those mild, sunny winter days when you have a feeling of holiday and eternity- the illusion that passage of time is suspended, and that you need only slip through this breach to escape the trap which is closing around you.