“Well, there aren’t exactly a lot of people around, are there?” Circling and circling in the deepening dusk around the area that seems right, Rat finally strikes lucky. A sign to Les Glycines.

“Are we there?”

“Yeah, we’re there.”

Eureka.

But no, not quite. Les Glycines, it turns out, is a maze of half-moon streets, where all the streets have flower names and all the houses are identical. Rat remembers that Mémé Catherine lives on rue de Jasmin, but she has no idea where that is. And there isn’t a living soul on the streets, not even a cat, and not a light visible in anybody’s house. Lost in a labyrinth of shuttered flowers, where Honeysuckle Row and Morning Glory Drive monotonously recur. Finally, they hit Jasmine, and she has a faint recollection of its being a house on the corner, but which corner? From which end have they arrived? How did she used to recognize Mémé Catherine’s house when she was a child?

“We’re on the right street, but I’m not sure about the house. Why don’t you stay here with the bags while I go look?”

Morgan clearly doesn’t want to be left behind, but he sits. Ten minutes later, Rat’s back.

“I found the house,” she says.

“Is she home?”

“I don’t think so. But come.”

Rat takes the knapsacks and helps Morgan to his feet. Her grandmother’s house is a hundred meters down the road. And yes, it’s on a corner. But there are no lights on inside, and the white metal shutters that open and close with an electric button look definitively shut.

“Are you sure it’s her house?”

“Yeah,” says Rat. “You can’t see it over the wall, but that’s her quince tree.”

She rings the bell several times at long intervals, but there is no answer.

“What do we do now?” asks Morgan.

“Let’s go get something to eat, and we’ll come back later.”

“Can we leave our stuff?”

She considers. They could climb over the gate and pitch their tent in Mémé Catherine’s garden, camp there till she came back. But Rat’s getting a bad feeling about this town, and the last thing she wants is one of Mémé Catherine’s invisible neighbors to go reporting to the police that some dangerous drifters have broken into Madame Bonnet’s property.

Instead, they shoulder their bags and hike back down to the bottom of the town. “There’ll be a café or something open on the seafront,” Rat promises. “Even if we can’t get a full meal, we’ll be able to have a croque-monsieur to warm us up.”

No such luck. It’s Sunday night. Every damn bar and pizzeria on the corniche is shuttered tight, lights out. And it’s cold.