“Come on,” Céline insists. “Let’s go.”

Jo’s smile broadens but she doesn’t take her eyes off Lucas. The muscles in her slim arms are tense, her entire body braced for an attack. A smooth, dark animal with a dual gaze. Even Céline is sometimes frightened. But now it’s Lucas weighing up the stakes, confused, hoping either she’ll disappear or he will, anything as long as this face-to-face stand-off stops. He starts to blink and his leg starts throbbing with a light, needling pain. Jo slowly moves away, and he feels she knows something he doesn’t, that she’s seen through his weakness and won. “It’s not me, anyway,” he stutters.

“Get lost, you bastard.”

In a slow movement, she finally turns to Saïd, who has approached without intervening. Lucas flinches at the insult but is no longer in a fit state to react. Moreover, Saïd’s presence permits him to be less brave. Saïd has always protected the sisters, everyone knows that, so nobody would think of provoking him. And on top of that, he’s an Arab, so for all they know he’s got contacts among terrorists, you never can tell with all that’s going on, so better be careful with them, he might be capable of blowing up the car for all they know.

Céline is already in the car, knees up, bare feet on the dashboard. Jo slumps in the back seat. With a sigh, Saïd starts the engine and lifts his sunglasses to wink at Jo in the rear-view mirror. “You scared him,” he says.

“I hope so.”

The small crowd behind them breaks up, starts to comment on the event and surrounds Lucas, who chases everybody away with an angry gesture.

The car speeds up, Saïd cuts across the roundabouts and the girls sway left and right, used to his driving. The car leaves the small town and takes the badly paved road that leads to the village: housing developments being built for the past ten years, a shopping centre, fields with apple trees. Jo drinks the poison of a landscape that’s too familiar. Her nonchalance is just a facade; inside, there’s a clash between love and revulsion for these paths travelled thousands of times.

“I’ll drive you home, but I won’t come in,” Saïd says.

Céline tenses up. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. I just don’t feel like falling out with your father. Or if his mate Patrick starts rubbing me the wrong way, things could get messy.”

Suddenly nauseous, Céline jumps and grabs the door handle. “Stop the car.”

The wheels dig into the slope and Céline rushes out and bends over the grass, but nothing comes out. She takes big gulps of air, walks along the edge of the asphalt and shakes her hands down by her sides.

In the car, Jo slumps in the seat. “Oh, God, she does go on…”

“You’re hard.”

“Got a problem with that?”

“Pretend I said nothing. But you don’t frighten me, cowboy.”

He lifts the rim of an imaginary hat with his fingers pointed into a pistol. Jo consents to smile. Childhood always catches up with them – if it really is behind them and not hanging from their necks like a blood-engorged tick on a dog’s back.