Marc was sitting on a tree stump soaking his finger in a cup of disinfectant solution bought from a pharmacy in a small town just outside Cahors. It was so warm they had decided to have a picnic by the river. It was a delightful spot. Polystyrene debris floated by on the current, Anne was spreading truffle foie gras onto thick slices of bread and, in the distance, a chainsaw could be heard topping acres of forest. After the Dr Blanchard incident, Marc had resolved if not to recover, at least put an end to his suffering. He had achieved this by taking three paracetamol and numbing the finger in this liquid, which smelled reassuringly of a Swiss toilet.

‘This is nice, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, not bad.’

‘You know, if I lived here, I’d buy a fishing rod. I’d get up early and come and sit here quietly, dipping my line in the water …’

‘And the chainsaw-carrying lunatic would jump out of a bush and cut your throat just to get the watch off your wrist.’

‘Why would you say that?’

‘Because peaceful little spots don’t exist, especially not in the countryside.’

‘You see the bad in everything.’

‘For good reason. More pâté?’

‘It’s foie gras, Anne. Foie gras, not pâté. Hey, listen … the chainsaw’s stopped.’

‘Then the madman’s clocked us.’

Marc shrugged, but deep down he had to admit there was something disconcerting about this sudden silence, broken only by the birds whose chirruping could again be heard. Anne snorted with her mouth full.

‘I was joking. Hey, don’t you think it might be time for a new car?’

‘Why? This one works perfectly well.’

‘That’s not the problem. Surely it’s crossed your mind Chloé hasn’t just been twiddling her thumbs since you upped and left. She’ll have reported you missing. We’ll hit a roadblock and bam, it’s game over. Plus it’s an ugly old banger, I never could stand it. It smells.’

Marc thought about this for a moment. Anne was not wrong. Knowing Chloé as he did, there was no doubt in his mind that she would have taken steps to find him. Yet he had nothing to feel guilty about. He hadn’t broken the law; it was a private matter. But the idea of having to explain himself to the authorities and, worse, to his spouse, even just on the phone, was too much to contemplate. Getting a new car wasn’t such a bad idea. It was Chloé who had chosen this one: ‘You can always trust a German car’; if it had been up to him, he’d have gone for a British or Italian make. Something with a bit more class.

‘Well, why not?’

A few hours later, after protracted negotiations with a dealer, they left the outskirts of Cahors at the wheel of a barely used camper van as handsome as a refrigerator truck.