“Who’s Saïd?”

“The neighbour. A childhood friend. Don’t worry, it can’t be him.”

“Oh, really? And how can you be sure?”

“She’s my daughter.” The father has a little fit of pride. Don’t push it.

“You can’t trust a fucking Arab,” Patrick adds.

“It’s not him, I tell you.”

“You gonna sit there and wait for the little bundle of joy to arrive so you can see who it looks like?”

The father sits up; his eyes are bloodshot. Lack of sleep and anger. “Actually, you’re right. I don’t know.”

The poison acts, reaching deep into his brain. It soils everything and everybody, sticky like the giant paulownia leaves. Manuel pictures faces smashed by his fists, even hears the sound of cartilage breaking against his fingers. But the faces are blurred, many and nameless. He longs to fight – constantly and with everybody.

They’ve been working on a new building site for the past two days. It’s a villa between Gordes and Bonnieux: an extension of the house, enlarging the pool, putting in a summer kitchen, a garden pond and an outbuilding for guests. The banal luxury of an area stuffed with idyllic enclaves, where there are as many private swimming pools as cicadas. All with stone cladding, naturally. Because, of course, they have taste. The owner says she didn’t want it to take too long, you see, her daughter’s getting married in August, so she’ll have guests. With a little tinkling laugh, she went back into the house, with eight eloquent pairs of eyes glued to her buttocks. Not sure about the daughter, but they wouldn’t have sneezed at the mother. Rich bitch, Manuel said through his teeth.

It just wouldn’t go away. No. Fighting. All the time, with everybody.

Saïd picks this very moment to knock on the open door: “It’s me. I’ve come to see Céline and Jo.”

He comes through the plastic curtain and smiles at the two men sitting at the table. A red strip sticks to his hair. He pauses before the two men’s look and their brutish body language.

“Clear off,” the father grunts. “Céline’s not here.”

“What is it you want with her?” Patrick adds.

Saïd freezes and his smile turns into a grimace. He’s eighteen and proud as a rooster, but his gut tells him the terrain is against him. He doesn’t insist. “I’ll come back later.”

“No point. I don’t want to see you hanging around my daughter, is that clear?”

The young man steps back even though the other two haven’t moved from their chairs. He leaves without a word, while Céline’s father yells once again so he can hear him from the street: “Did you hear that, you little shitface? Did you get that? I see you here again, you’re dead!”

Fighting. All the time, with everybody.

Swimming Pools

It’s something they’ve always done. At least since they’ve been old enough to slip out of the house without making a sound. Let loose like wild children in scrubland. Nobody’s ever considered stopping them because nobody really knows. At night, every summer when the stifling heat begins, Jo and Céline sneak into the nice, still-empty properties to take advantage of their swimming pools. It’s now become more of a ritual than a habit, and marks the start of the season. The Vaucluse is full of villas lived in one month a year, and they all have pools that are clean and lit from June onwards.