They didn’t talk of love, they didn’t talk much, actually, each of them living this experience like their own private film, with an inner interpretation of it that excluded the other. It was an exquisite misunderstanding.

He sometimes tells himself he let a man die for her. That’s when the images come back. The rest of the time, he tries to forget. It helps not to talk about it. It was too hard when he was alone with Manuel. Especially since the night when… That’s what he calls it in his head, no other way to refer to it. The night when. After that night, in front of Manuel, he became a piece of shit, a first-rate bastard. He was ashamed. It was far better to leave. It was the only way out he could find, and, all in all, it probably wasn’t the worst.

Since he’s been in Marseilles, he sometimes doesn’t even think about it, neither about her nor about the body crushed by the burial beneath hardened concrete. Sometimes, he walks around the city and even beyond it for hours, wandering as far as Callelongue or the Baie des Singes. The presence of the sea calms him down. On the road to Les Goudes and at the very end of it he gets lost amid the sharp, chalky pebbles. Sometimes, he imagines falling. He thinks about the bottom of the water, the silence beneath the sea, the dark blue to rest his eyes. Patrick no longer knows how to rest. He sleeps so badly that he’s forgotten about lie-ins, even on days when he’s not working. The future no longer means much to him, the future just means tomorrow, and the time it gets light. Evenings when there’s a match on, he goes to the bar and joins the gang of men at the Calenzana, a Corsican bistro down the road from him. In front of the large screen, among the others, he feels lonelier than ever but less empty. That’s the advantage of bistros. Admittedly, he doesn’t think much about Valérie.

He looks like a guilty child when he approaches the buggy. A bit of a swagger under his unease, his clumsy gestures.

She looks at him, but with empty eyes. There’s only the two of them and yet he whispers. “I found a job in Marseilles.”

She doesn’t say anything, so he wonders if she’s heard. He realizes it’s crazy, she’s bound to know already.

“Valérie and I broke up, you know, it wasn’t working between us any more.”