But he is here. A part of him. However small.

The Lalouettes do not take the news of my vegetarianism well. I find myself adding, “J’adore légumes!” after I inform them, which I do well before dinner, forewarned being forearmed.

For the first time since our arrival, the couple survey each other, like the only remaining survivors of some type of holocaust.

“Végétarienne?” Madame Lalouette whispers. He nods grimly before returning to his garden with a heavy tread. Dad and Iris sleep for an hour before dinner. I sit on my bed with my phone in my hands. I should ring Brendan.

See how the meeting went this morning. I should ring the girls. See how the studying and the rehearsals are going.

Instead, I think about earlier. On the motorbike. The speed of it. And the speed of the world, flashing past. They are most diverting, these thoughts. Because, before I know it, an hour has passed and it is time to get dressed for dinner. My choices are limited given my recent lax attitude to laundry. I pull on the bright pink tulle high-waisted midi-skirt and the scarlet spaghetti top. I look like one of those ice pops you never allow your children to eat.

I’ll make the phone calls later.

The Lalouettes are in the kitchen when we arrive downstairs, Monsieur Lalouette nods briefly at us and continues to worry at a kitchen drawer with a screwdriver, while Madame Lalouette pokes and prods at various pots with a wooden spoon. She gestures us towards the dining room table and walks to the fridge. She passes Monsieur Lalouette on the way, sidesteps him. He does not look up.

We arrange ourselves around the dining room table. “You look lovely, Iris,” I say. She is wearing a pale pink dress, sleeveless and knee length. It has never seen the benefit of an iron, but gets away with it because of the fabric. And she’s caught some sun on her face, making her green eyes greener and her long lashes darker. But more than that, there’s something about her face that is different. It seems...unhindered somehow. At ease. Iris will seldom tell you if she feels pain or discomfort, but I can usually spot it on her face. A tightening of the skin across her bones.

Tonight, her face is as clear as the French evening sky. “I had a snooze, a shit, and a shave,” she tells me.

“You could have just said, thank you,” I say, grateful that the Lalouettes don’t speak English.

“I’m a details person,” she says.

She hasn’t asked about Lucas. If he rang. What he said about the car. She appears to have accepted our...situation.

The first course passes without event. Onion soup. “Oignons,” Monsieur Lalouette proclaims, pointing at the vegetable patch in the garden.

“Délicieux,” Iris says, inhaling the steam curling from her bowl and ladling a spoon of soup into her mouth.

I wait until Monsieur Lalouette returns to the kitchen before I fish the rings of onion out of Dad’s soup, drop them into mine. He won’t eat it otherwise. Now my starter is more onion than soup, but I manage it down, with the help of the bread, which is warm and crusty.