“No, we can’t. I’ve got other plans.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to Daniel and Zaza’s for dinner. You sure are hard to figure, Rat. I mean, you’re always complaining I’m not there for you, and then—”

“I know, I know. I’m sorry, Mama—it was just … Mama?”

“Yes, honey?”

“Can we have it another night? Day after tomorrow?”

“We’ll see.”

“Please?”

“I had everything fixed up for tonight.”

“Fixed up” means made sure Thierry was going to be away. This is the big change in their lives: Thierry has a job now. He’s looking after some vacation properties up in Brix. Easter to September’s high season: often he sleeps there during the week.

“We’ll find another time, okay?” says Rat. “Listen, Mama. I’m really really sorry I fucked up tonight. Give Morgan a big kiss from me. And a big kiss for you. I love you, Mama-do.”

“Okay,” says Vanessa, but she doesn’t sound convinced.

Rat rejoins the others. Her stomach’s all in knots, she feels like shit. But how was she to know Vanessa had gone and made her a cake? You can never tell when she’s going to get it into her head suddenly to make a fuss over you.

“What’s wrong?” asks Jérôme, at once.

“Vanessa’d gone and made me a birthday cake for tonight.”

“That’s what she said? You never know. She might just be saying it to make you feel bad. Vanessa’s cakes …”

“Don’t be rude; you’re gonna have to eat it, too.”

Jérôme groans. “Remember the time she burnt it so bad even Vesuvio wouldn’t touch it?”

“Yeah, I remember—we had to throw out the pan. She did one for Morgan’s birthday, though, that wasn’t so bad.”

“All this talk of food is making me hungry,” complains Florian. “Shall we incinerate these sausages, or what?”

It’s after midnight.

They’ve finished dinner, they’ve given Rat her presents—an Indian spirit-catcher from Jérôme, an old gray-green corduroy jacket from Florian that he says belonged to his granny’s boyfriend, and which Rat instantly loves.

Now the three of them are lying on the beach, looking out to sea. Every once in a while, someone gets up to put some more driftwood on the fire.

In a couple of weeks, the nights will be thrumming with cicadas, but tonight it’s still too cold. Silence, except for the low lapping of the waves on the shore.

It’s a misty gray night. Stars faint; no moon. The only light in all this big gray-blackness is the lights of fishing boats at sea and the pulsing green Morse code of the lighthouse at Port-Vendres. All up and down the coast, lighthouses are talking to one another in their own secret language of beams and pulses.