From there, another train took them back to Paris. The train they’d been on,’ she added quickly, seeing Fay’s expression of surprise, ‘had been damaged in the air raid, and anyway would not have been able to continue because of the fighting ahead. The German forces were tightening their noose around Paris. Your mother had left it too late to leave.’ ‘So we were trapped here,’ Fay whispered. The realization that she’d been present through these terrifying events was still dawning on her. She’d remembered nothing, of course, she had been too young. Yet, perhaps there was something. That bell in Notre Dame on the school trip. The panic it had awoken in her. Maybe she had been remembering a different bell. She explained this to Mme Ramond now. ‘I thought it was something about Notre Dame itself that frightened me,’ she ended up. ‘But perhaps I had been mixing up the two experiences. Do you think that could happen?’ Mme Ramond frowned. ‘Possibly, though I’m sure you were correct to think you had visited Notre Dame before.
