“Who gives a shit?”

“What do you mean?”

“Who cares who it is? Even I don’t care.”

“You don’t even know who it is?”

“Course I do.”

“You’re off your head.”

“I know exactly who it is.”

Jo gets the giggles. “Fuck, Céline…”

Their hiccuping laughter echoes against the stone walls of the villa. Their hair is stuck to their heads, their faces wet, their mouths open in a roaring laughter amplified by the night. Céline’s black mascara is running under her eyes. Her belly and her breasts relax in the eddies. And the turquoise light of the swimming pool gives them a magnificent drowned glow.

They mustn’t be too late. There’s school in the morning.

Small Town

Sitting on the terrace of the Café de France, Séverine is waiting. She’s on edge and that irritates her. Charlotte is coming, only Charlotte, so no point torturing her keys to the point of crushing the white rabbit hanging from the key ring. No point in checking her hair in her reflection and smoking four cigarettes only to crush them half-finished. Luckily, the owner of the café is ogling her, smiling, and she likes that; she’s not twenty any more, so she must be grateful for what she can get.

Séverine did have her moment of glory, twenty years ago – twenty! She and her mate Sabrina had it, at the Privilège, the only nightclub in the region. It was so easy, with everyone’s bodies so close. They existed in their flesh, electric – and played at being hard to get, while actually it wouldn’t have taken much if they’d been handled differently. Just a little gentleness, a compliment, maybe some interest.

Their trick – hers and Sabrina’s – was to dance glued to each other. Not exactly groundbreaking but as effective as the beginning of a porn film. Hair in their faces, shoulders bare, they would writhe under the lights every Saturday night. Séverine’s parents allowed her. Youth had to have its way, after all. Her mother would sometimes worry about her getting home at night; it was about eighteen miles from the farm to the club, which was in an industrial district of Avignon. She’d always check what state the driver was in before letting Séverine go, but the driver is never drunk on the way there. They’d turn up at the farm, reeking of gel or perfume, with sparkling teeth and bracelets and a mouthful of polite Good evening, Madames. She would let her daughter go. Her husband stayed in the background, as if this didn’t really concern him. Sometimes, brutal and arbitrary, he’d make Séverine go and change if he thought she looked too sexy. But usually he was busy doing something else when she had to leave – counting crates of apples again, yelling at a worker or fixing the sulphate sprayer.