They sit down on a bench overlooking the sea, picking through the bread and cheese and ham and cucumber left over from lunch. Morgan, Rat can tell, is still ravenous. Hunger makes him colder, the cold makes him hungrier. Isn’t there some story about the three wolves of hunger, cold, fatigue? She wonders what she was thinking of, prying him away from the Cabreras’ cozy home, before she had a sure place to take him to.

After hiking back up to Mémé Catherine’s once more to make sure she hasn’t come home, they return to the small playground that Rat’s reconnoitered as the safest, driest place for them to spend the night, and lay out their ground rolls and sleeping bags in a small plywood hut that has an extremely cold metal pole running vertically through it.

It’s early still, but there’s nothing for it but to try to sleep. Climbing into their sleeping bags, each tries to wriggle himself into a tolerable position, in Rat’s case, with knees drawn to her chin.

For years Morgan’s been asking her to take him camping, just the two of them. Somehow she’d imagined their first night alone under the stars a bit more festive.

“Rat?”

“Mmm?”

“I’m still hungry.” Morgan voices this observation as neutrally as if they are conducting a scientific experiment in how much it takes to fill a person’s stomach.

“I know, Mo. We’ll get you a big breakfast tomorrow, I promise. Hot chocolate, pastries, the works.” Pretty soon she’ll have to start husbanding their sixty euros, especially if there’s no Mémé Catherine to take them in, but not yet.

“Rat?”

“Mmmmmm.”

“You know how you see pictures of children, posted up on walls?”

“Mmmmmm.”

“Who are those children?”

“They’re missing children,” says Rat, puzzled. “Kids who’ve been kidnapped, or who’ve run away from home.”

“Are we missing children?”

“No, not a bit. We told Vanessa we were leaving. She waved us good-bye, remember?”

“You don’t think Thierry’s going to come after us, do you?”

“That coward? No way.”

“He was putting up posters for Vesuvio. You don’t think he’ll put up posters for us?”

“Are you kidding? I think he’ll be dead-relieved we’re gone.”

Morgan subsides, apparently satisfied.

The next morning, Rat awakens at dawn. She routs them from their playground hut—sore, frozen—as soon as the sun’s risen above the sea, and packs up. Even if they have Vanessa’s say-so, last thing she wants is to attract the attention of anybody official.

On the corniche, a lone bakery is open. Rat picks up L’Indépendant from the stack of newspapers by the door.

“Putain,” she says, glancing at the front-page photograph. “There’s cars getting burned all over the place now—two cars in Canet last night!”