Nobody speaks on the way back to the village. While I feel that silence is Lucas’s default setting, the same cannot normally be said for Iris. Perhaps she is tired.

So is Dad, who is asleep again, his head bumping on my shoulder. He is sleeping more and more. I will worry about it when I get back home.

Lucas drops us outside a house in the village and points to a sign in the garden that suggests it is a guesthouse and that there are vacancies. “It’s the only place that’s open,” he says, and there is an apology in his voice.

I thank him and take notes out of my wallet. “How much do I owe you?”

He waves the money away with his gigantic hand. “I will know more later,” he says, before driving away. We stand at the side of the road surrounded by our bags. “What does he mean? Later?” says Iris. “That’s not a time.”

“He seems reliable,” I tell her, checking my watch. “And it’s only four o’clock. Still the afternoon.”

Iris shakes her head. Sighs. “This was not in the plan,” she says. I hate seeing her like this. She looks forlorn, which is not a word I’ve ever needed to use in relation to Iris Armstrong.

“Lucas might not need to order any parts,” I say. “If the...egg and sticky-tape work.”

“But what if he does?” says Iris.

“Then we’ll work something out,” I tell her. This isn’t a reprieve. But it feels like one all the same.

24

When approaching a toll, reduce your speed appropriately.

The guesthouse is, like everything in France I am coming to realize, intensely French.

It is situated off the main street, at the end of a narrow, winding road, the front garden heavily stocked with a mix of practicalities and beauty—apple and fig trees, strawberry runners, lettuce, potatoes, scallions, rhubarb, fuchsia, honeysuckle, sweet pea, lavender. It is a riot of colorful order, permeated by a strong smell of wild garlic. In the midst of all this nature sits a small square white house, with a terra-cotta roof and duck-egg-blue wooden shutters edging each window. There is a stone cherub, chipped and cloaked in lichen. Also the de rigueur statue of Joan of Arc in her military uniform with her sword held aloft, in a stone grotto on the far side of the garden. The gate tinkles as I open it and we follow a meandering cobbled path through this abundance of flora towards the house where wind chimes sway, the tubes of bamboo lifting in the gentle breeze, glancing against each other to release their melancholy melody. Wild roses—a delicate shade of peach—arch around the wooden front door, and when I knock on it, it creaks open to reveal a dark hallway emitting a strong smell of cleanliness.

Which is good. I am a fan of cleanliness, am I not?

But there’s something clinical about this cleanliness. The white ceramic floor tiles gleam with recent attention. Even the bannisters—which are great harbingers of dust if you know where to look—are exemplary.