A drop of blood was forming under Marc’s nail.

There were lots of people on the beach, little blots of colour that grew bigger as you drew nearer. It made you wonder where they had come from, these people you saw nowhere else. The sun had probably just conjured them up. Their average age was quite high.

‘Must be an open day at the local cemetery.’

Anne seemed sulky. She was taking obvious pleasure in crushing the empty shells under her feet.

‘Did it not go well last night?’

‘What? With Désiré? No, it went fine. Like a dose of local anaesthetic.’

Marc was put out by Anne’s lacklustre response. It had, after all, cost him five hundred euros to get her a shag. And yet he did not regret it. He had paid to dare make it happen, to prove to his daughter that he could meet her strangest whims. Yet clearly he had only succeeded in impressing himself. Still, if it made her feel momentarily better, then why not? What was really bothering him was the thought of going back. Back to what? He had only just left but had already gone too far to turn back. His newfound freedom stood in the way.

‘Look, a rat!’

It might have been mistaken for a patch of tar, but was indeed a rat, a dead one, with a bloated stomach, gummed-up fur, stiff paws and a floppy tail, lying on a bed of kelp.

‘It must have fallen off a boat.’

‘Maybe it came from China?’

‘Maybe.’

‘All that way just to snuff it at Le Touquet. He’d have been better off staying at home too.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘No reason, just saying. For everyone who thinks things are better somewhere else.’

They found two more rats before they reached the lighthouse where they sat to look at the wide-open sea, which at this point on the estuary seemed in fact rather narrow.

‘Do you really want to go back to the hospital?’

‘Are you going to make me a better offer?’

‘Do you know Agen?’

‘Agen? Where’s that?’

‘In the south, the south-west.’

‘What’s there?’

‘Prunes,’ he replied without thinking, his head bowed, tracing parallel lines with his toe in the sand.

‘Are you constipated?’

‘No. I just don’t want to go home.’

‘Ah.’

There was a boat balancing on the horizon line in the distance, standing almost still.

‘Are you not getting on with Chloé?’

‘It’s not that. I don’t want to go back, that’s all.’

‘So you want to go to Agen.’

‘Agen or anywhere, it’s all the same to me.’

‘But you don’t want to go on your own.’

‘You don’t have to come.’

‘Glad to hear it! … What are you afraid of?’

‘I don’t know. Of having regrets.’

‘Well then, let’s go to Agen. It can’t be any worse than this place!’

Having had lunch at the hotel, loaded the luggage in the car and put Boudu on the back seat, Marc asked Anne if she wanted to say goodbye to Désiré.