This last entry, unusually, has a date. That’s how I know. She was jealous with her pills, hiding the bottle away at the bottom of a drawer in her room. Sometimes she would take the bottle out and turn it over. It was brown glass, the label still showing a few barely legible words in German.

Out of pills.

That was the night of the dance, the night of the last orange.

2.

Hey, Backfisch, almost forgot.“ Turning, he threw it carelessly, like a boy pitching a ball, to see if I’d catch. He was like that, pretending to forget, teasing me, risking the prize in the murky Loire if I was slow or clumsy. ”Your favorite.“

I caught it easily, left-handed. Grinned.

“Tell the others to come by La Mauvaise Réputation tonight.” Winked, eyes glinting cat-green with mischief. “Might be some fun.”

Of course, Mother would never have let us go out at night. Though the curfew remained largely unenforceable in the remoter villages such as ours, there were other dangers. Night hid more illicit goings-on than we could guess, and by then a number of off-duty Germans had occasionally taken to stopping by at the café for drinks. Apparently they liked to get out of Angers and away from the suspicious eye of the S.S. In the course of our meetings Tomas had mentioned this, and sometimes I heard the sounds of motorbikes on the distant road and thought of him riding home. I saw him clearly in my mind’s eye, hair blown back by the wind, the moonlight shining on his face and the cold white sweep of the Loire. The motorbike riders might have been anyone, of course. But I always thought of Tomas.

Today, however, was different. Emboldened perhaps by our secret time together, anything seemed possible. Slinging his uniform jacket over his shoulders Tomas waved lazily as he drove off, kicking up a cloud of yellow Loire dust beneath his wheels, and suddenly my heart swelled unbearably. Loss flooded through me in a hot-cold wash and I ran after him, tasting his dust, waving my arms for long after his bike vanished down the Angers road, tears beginning to crawl pink channels across my face’s mud mask.

It wasn’t enough.

I’d had my day, my one perfect day, and already my heart was boiling with rage and dissatisfaction. I clocked the sun. Four hours. An impossible time, a whole afternoon, and yet it wasn’t enough, I wanted more. More. The discovery of this new appetite within me made me bite my lips in desperation; the memory of the brief contact between us burnt at my hand like a brand. Several times I lifted my palm to my lips and kissed the burning place his skin had left. I lingered over his words as if they were poetry. I relived every precious moment to myself, with growing disbelief, as on winter mornings I still try to recall the summer. But it is an appetite that no amount of feeding can satisfy. I wanted to see him again, that day, that minute. I had wild thoughts of us running away together, of living in the forest away from people, of myself building him a tree house and eating mushrooms and wild strawberries and chestnuts until the war was over…

Cassis, Reine and Paul found me at the Lookout Post, the orange in one hand, lying on my back and staring into the autumn canopy.

“S-s-said she’d b-be here,” said Paul (he always stammered badly when Reine was there). “S-s-saw her g-oing into the w-woods when I was f-fishing.”

He looked shy and awkward beside Cassis, conscious of his scruffy blue dungarees (cut down from one of his uncle’s overalls) and his bare feet in their wooden clogs. Malabar was with him, tied with a length of green gardening twine. Cassis and Reine wore their school clothes, and Reinette’s hair was tied with a yellow silk ribbon. I always wondered why Paul dressed so shabbily when his mother was a seamstress.

“Are you all right?” Cassis’s voice was sharp with anxiety. “When you didn’t come home, I thought-” He cast a quick dark look at Paul, then one of warning to me. “You know who hasn’t been here, has he?” he whispered, clearly wishing that Paul would leave.

I nodded. Cassis made a gesture of annoyance. “What did I tell you?” he said in a low, furious voice. “What did I say, never to be alone with-” Another glance at Paul. “Anyway, we’d better be going home now,” he said in a louder voice. “Mother will be starting to get worried, and she’s making a pavé. You’d better hurry up and-”

But Paul was looking at the orange in my hand.

“You g-got another un,” he said in his slow, curious way.

Cassis gave me a look of disgust. Why couldn’t you hide it, stupid? Now we’ll have to share it with him.

I hesitated. Sharing was not in my plan. I needed the orange for tonight. And yet I could see Paul was already curious. Ready to talk.

“I’ll give you some if you don’t tell,” I said at last.

“Where’s it f-from?”

“Swapped it down the market,” I said glibly. “For some sugar and parachute silk. Mother doesn’t know.”

Paul nodded, then looked shyly at Reine. “We could all sh-share it now,” he said tentatively. “I’ve gotta knife.”

“Give it to me,” I said.

“I’ll do it,” said Cassis at once.

“No, it’s mine,” I said. “Let me.”

I was thinking rapidly. Of course I might be able to retrieve some of the orange peel, but I didn’t want Cassis to suspect.

I turned my back on them to divide the orange, slicing carefully to avoid cutting my hand. Cutting quarters would have been easy, slice down the middle, then slice again, but this time I needed to cut an extra piece, large enough for my purpose but too small to be immediately noticeable as missing from the rest, a piece I could slip into my pocket for later… As I sliced it I saw that Tomas’s gift was a Seville blood orange, a sanguine, and for an instant I was transfixed at the red juice dripping from my fingers.

“Hurry up, clumsy,” said Cassis impatiently. “How long does it take to cut an orange into quarters?”

“I’m trying,” I snapped. “The skin’s so tough.”

“L-let m-m-m-” Paul made a move toward me and for a second I was sure he’d seen it, the fifth piece, no more than a sliver really, before I slid it into my sleeve and out of sight.

“It’s all right,” I said. “I’ve done it now.”

The pieces were uneven. I had done the best I could, but still there was one quarter that was noticeably bigger than the rest, and another that was very small. I took the small piece. I noticed Paul gave the large one to Reine.

Cassis watched in disgust. “I told you you should have let me do it,” he said. “Mine isn’t a proper quarter. You’re so clumsy, Boise.”

I sucked my piece of orange in silence. After a while Cassis stopped grumbling and ate his. I saw Paul watching me with an odd expression, but he didn’t say anything.

We threw our pieces of peel into the river. I did manage to save one piece of mine in my mouth, but I threw in the rest, uneasily aware of Cassis’s eyes on me, and was relieved to see him relax a little. I wondered what he might have suspected. I transferred the bitten-off piece of peel into my pocket with the illicit fifth quarter, feeling pleased.

I just hoped it would be enough.

I showed the others how to clean their hands and mouths with mint and fennel and to rub under their fingernails with mud to hide the orange-peel stain, then we went home through the fields to where Mother, singing tonelessly to herself in the kitchen, was preparing dinner.

“Sweat the onion and shallots in olive oil with some fresh rosemary, mushrooms and a small leek. Add a handful of dried tomatoes, basil and thyme. Cut four anchovies lengthways and place in the pan. Leave for five minutes.

“Boise, some anchovies from the barrel. Four big ones.”

I went down to the cellar with a dish and the wooden tongs so that the salt would not crack open the skin of my palms. I took out the fish, then the orange bag in its protective jar. I added the new piece of orange, squeezing the oil and juice onto the old peel to revive it, then chopped what was left with my pocketknife and tied it into the bag. The scent was immediate and pungent. I sealed the bag back into the jar, rubbed the glass clean of salt and placed it in my apron pocket so that no more of the precious scent could escape. I touched my palms briefly against the salted fish so that Mother would be deceived.