She used to think very little about her mother. She was simply a war orphan. Many of her contemporaries had lost their fathers and mothers, and only rarely does it occur to children that circumstances could be other than the way they are. In the graveyard which Bea can see from the attic window? a French garden divided by severely pruned hedges into numerous squares and rectangles? there was no grave for her mother, one which she could have looked after, and she had no memories apart from the one she never really had, from 26 February 1945.