“Who is it?”

Céline couldn’t answer even if she wanted to. She tries to catch her breath. Her hair hangs straight over her face, so you can’t see her eyes or her mouth. Jo would like to help her but it’s as though her feet are screwed to the floor like a prison bed.

The kitchen smells of detergent and lavender, like an advert for the South of France, cicadas and all.

“Who’s the piece of shit that did this to you? Who’s the son of a bitch who dared?”

Their mother fills a glass with water. It slips out of her hand and rolls into the stainless-steel sink. She whispers Stop it, but without conviction. Actually, you don’t really know who she’s saying it to.

“Are you going to answer me or not?”

Then her father stops yelling. His chin starts to quiver and that’s even more threatening, so Jo looks away. Their mother crouches down, holding the glass of water, and lifts Céline’s face but with no tenderness. She’s never been shown any herself, after all. Just for a second, you wonder if she’s about to throw the water in her daughter’s face or help her drink it. Céline props herself up on the floor with one hand and clings to her mother with the other. The water spills and runs down her mother’s bare knee and she gets annoyed, pulls away, leaves the glass on the floor and stands back up with difficulty – a very old woman all of a sudden, though she always carries on as if she’s thirty. Céline lets go of her wrist and remains lying on her elbow. Her lip has swollen up and her nose looks crooked. Her father has never hit her so hard before. She takes the glass to drink from it but the water runs down the side, over her chin and onto her T-shirt that has a pink pattern with sequins around it, and there’s blood bubbling out of her right nostril. There’s a stabbing pain in her stomach, like a thousand darts.

Her father stands with his arms crossed, having regained his strength even in his body language, and challenges Céline with his glare. Her eyes are full of water, her cheeks hollow from gritting her teeth.

“She’s not going to tell,” her mother hisses. “The bitch isn’t going to tell us anything.”

Freed from Desire

They’d looked almost attractive when they left home earlier that evening. The mother, with her carrot-orange tan and her skin glowing with lotion, wore her gold chain with the dolphin charm. She looked so young nibbling at the animal with her front teeth, smiling absent-mindedly. The father smelled of soap and aftershave and was breathing heavily. He quickly put his soft packet of Marlboros in his shirt pocket – the collar was already drenched in sweat – and lit a cigarette in the early evening. He squinted in the still-bright, purplish light. He looked at the rows of vines as though he owned them.