I’ve always wondered. And theory becomes truth. The grocery shop is always crowded despite the two-euros-a-pound aubergines and the owner’s inability to give the correct change. There’s much talk amid the market stalls, people remember things, and what they don’t know, they make up. An anxious excitement, the pleasure of self-importance at being at the heart of things. Good God, even in our own backyard. Basically, everybody feels they finally exist.

Saïd’s mother no longer goes out, and her sisters keep their heads down when they go shopping in the village.

“It’s so stupid,” Jo grumbles all day long. “They’re crazy.”

“You don’t know that,” her mother replies. She’s been going to the grocer’s quite a lot the past few days.

Her father doesn’t say anything. Her father doesn’t say anything any more, anyway, just works and comes home late. He’s started on a new building site in Roussillon. When he gets back, he drinks quite a few beers then collapses in a heap on his side of the bed.

As for Céline, she’s still feeding the seasonal workers with her grandmother, sits down more often, and carries fewer bottles. The guys are sweet, they help her, and also wonder about Saïd’s disappearance.

One evening, Saïd’s mother pops round, in tears. She looks into Manuel’s eyes as he stands in the garden, a halo of mosquitoes around him under the outdoor light. He thinks about Saïd, about the broken body beneath the cubic feet of cement. He thinks about it as though it had nothing to do with him and feels sorry for the dishevelled woman who looks at him, sniffing. Then a pang of shame stabs him in the stomach. He coughs and looks away.

When the police come to the house, they sit on the lemon-yellow sofa and don’t beat about the bush. Did Johanna and Céline know him well? Did Saïd ever talk about religion, advocate purity, denounce Western decadence?

Jo gets the feeling they’re using words they don’t entirely understand, as if they’ve just learned them. But Jo’s a pain. She shakes her head and mocks them. “Western decadence? No, he drinks Coke, likes girls and has never made any remarks about Céline’s outfits… And yet there are guys here who don’t hold back.”

Séverine puckers her lips. She’s sitting opposite them, cross-legged, earnest. “You can never really tell, you know. He was working for my parents and all of a sudden he’s gone… Goes to show you can never really trust them, right?”

Jo gets worked up. “Them? Who do you mean exactly?”

Her mother’s usually not as fucking stupid as her father about these things.

“Let your mother say what she has to say, Mademoiselle. We’re here to listen to everyone.”