Free Girl at the Lion D'Or by Sebastian Faulks

house in Reims. They lived in Paris for a while, but my mother had a hankering for the country and wanted to be near some water. It was she who found this house. She was a nervous woman and she liked to look out over the lake. She found it reassuring.’
    ‘Did she bring you up a Catholic?’
    ‘Oh yes, though I wasn’t very good at it.’
    ‘They say the Jewish people are persecuted in Germany, just because of their religion.’
    ‘I know,’ said Hartmann. ‘I’ve read that we’re already taking refugees. But it’s happening everywhere, throughout Europe, even in this country. The young men and the war veterans in their leagues, they seem insane to me.’
    Anne thought she had taxed Hartmann’s patience enough with her questions. She picked up a brush and began to sweep the grate.
    It was he who eventually broke the silence. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with all these books. I’m going to have to get rid of half of them unless I want the house to look like a library.’
    ‘There’s room in the hall.’
    ‘I suppose so. Do you like reading, Anne?’
    ‘Oh yes. It’s a wonderful way of escaping, isn’t it?’
    ‘Escaping? Yes . . . I’ve always thought of it as more of a means of coming to grips with things.’
    ‘I suppose so,’ said Anne uncertainly. ‘You do learn things from books, I’m sure. I just like . . . stories, I think.’
    Hartmann picked up some papers and put them down in a different place which Anne assumed had some significance in his private sorting system. Then he sat down again.
    He looked her straight in the eye and said, ‘You’re a very self-confident girl, Anne, aren’t you?’
    His voice held such gentleness that Anne found herself calm. ‘Not really, monsieur. I’m frightened most of the time, just like anyone else. There’s so much in one’s life over which one has no control – whether people will be kind to you, and so on.’ She paused. ‘I never know what’s going to happen to me.’
    Hartmann looked sceptical, which pleased her. ‘Robust,’ he said. ‘Perhaps that’s the word.’
    ‘Do you mean because I can do this heavy work?’ She glanced down at her body, whose lightness was concealed by her white apron, and laughed. Hartmann’s eyes followed hers. She looked up and met his gaze, feeling now a slight confusion.
    ‘Not physically,’ he said. ‘I meant you seemed to be a person who is naturally happy and who wouldn’t be easily upset.’
    ‘Oh, I hope so.’ She smiled. ‘I’d like very much to be like that.’
    Hartmann frowned and looked away. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘it’s really none of my business. Sometimes I forget I’m no longer in Paris.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Oh, nothing. A different place, old habits . . . Here in the country people are more formal, don’t you think?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Anne, then added boldly, ‘Don’t you hate it?’
    Hartmann laughed. ‘Yes! I can’t bear it!’
    ‘So why did you come?’
    ‘Lots of reasons. But first I want to hear about your life.’
    ‘Oh, monsieur, there’s nothing to hear. It’s not interesting like yours. No government scandals or meeting famous people.’
    ‘But everyone’s life is interesting. Did your parents come from Paris? Were you born there?’
    ‘I – no, we came from the south. But then we moved.’
    His questions, about her family and her home, were simple and polite enough, but Anne’s answers were oblique.
    As she heard herself going through the quick formulations that had saved her so many times before from having to talk too frankly about herself, she felt the intimacy she had created with Hartmann begin to evaporate. Where he had been so honest with her about his life, she was giving him nothing but evasions. No bond, she miserably told herself, can grow between two people when only one is telling the truth.
    More than anything she would have liked to trust him and tell him the secrets and fears of her life, but it was