Walking along the road towards the village, it is possible to imagine myself as a tourist. An ordinary, common or garden tourist out for an afternoon stroll. Taking the French air. Admiring the countryside, for this is what tourists do, is it not? They stroll, they breathe in the lovely air, they admire...I don’t know...the flora and fauna...that sort of thing.

I breathe. In through my nose. I am conscious of the sound I make. It seems loud. I smell something, and it is sweet, this something that I smell. I look around. I am still walking, but my progress slows and slows until it stops altogether and I am standing still. I turn around but can no longer see Iris or Dad or the broken-down car. All I see is...beauty. Which I realize sounds a little, well, fanciful. But it’s true. That’s what I see. Beauty. It’s everywhere, wrapped around me like a shawl. A silk one, for it feels light and delicate. Soft against my skin, like a warm breeze. There’s no breeze now. Instead, all is still. On either side of the narrow road are green fields of burgeoning sunflowers. Tournesols, the French call them. Because they turn their heads towards the sun. The green fields billow towards the horizon, like sheets on a clothesline, where they meet the sky, which is—I see now, lifting my face up—the sheerest, purest blue of any sky I’ve ever seen. It is a true blue. There isn’t a blemish on it. Not one cloud troubles it. It is seamless.

I turn my head towards the sun and close my eyes. Without the noise of my sandals against the macadam, I can hear rustling. Perhaps a field mouse? And birdsong, sweet and clear like the soundtrack of a film with a happy ending.

And the steady sound of my own breath, calm and composed. I feel...unlike myself. Like a character in that film with the happy ending. The sunlight pours onto the beginnings of the tournesols and everything seems possible. These green shoots will bloom and the fields will fill with flowers and the color will be the color of the sunlight that pours like rain down their stems.

And even Iris. She too has been infused with this glorious sense of possibility. I’m sure of it.

I don’t know how long I stand there, with my face turned towards the sun like one of the tournesols, as if melanoma doesn’t exist. I should be doing something. Something productive.

I walk on.

Around the next bend, through the shimmer of heat hovering above the road, a village. I quicken my pace, cross a wooden bridge, pass an empty playground where swings sway on metal-link chains in the gentle breeze. I seem to be on the main street now. There is a bakery (closed), a tabac (closed), a hairdresser’s (closed), a restaurant (open and teeming with, it seems, the entire population of the village, for there is nobody on the pavement). Apart from me. I walk up the quiet cobbled street. I would usually feel nervous, walking alone on a deserted street. But, perhaps because of the sunshine or because of the fields of tournesols or maybe just because of the quietness, it feels like a dream, and in my dream, I am walking except it feels like floating, and in my dream, I am wearing a gossamer-thin chiffon dress that billows around my body and is the color of sunshine even though I am actually wearing a creased linen dress, the color of fog.