Besides, today is a special Sunday. On top of the usual unease, there’s this huge piece of failure on the plates in front of them: Céline and her belly, Céline the unmarried mother – it’s what they still call girls around these parts who are quick to jump into bed with just anybody. Séverine’s mother has been tight-lipped since they got here, not said a word. But it’s not her granddaughter she’s looking at, neither at her nor the other one, or at her impossible revenge-craving son-in-law. She’s watching her daughter, only her daughter, as though she’s searching for something no one else can guess or speaking harsh words with her eyes. She goes from the dark indoors to the blindingly white light of the garden, carrying bottles and salad bowls. Her hands move briskly and abruptly, true to her manner. Séverine splendidly ignores her mother’s look and her rushed agitation. She smokes a cigarette after every course and hangs around the kitchen only when her mother isn’t there. A subtle dance, a fools’ ballet.

Manuel drinks a little too quickly.

“They can work here this summer,” the grandfather says, jutting his chin at Céline and Jo.

The former is pecking at pieces of melon on the tip of her knife. The latter is biting into them, her chin dripping with orange-coloured juice.

Around them, everything is screeching beneath the egg-yolk sun. The constant song of the cicadas is getting on their nerves, irritating their eardrums like tinnitus. The dog is dribbling in the dust, crushed by the heat, at the end of its chain. It’s an old mastiff with droopy red eyelids and watery eyes. It suddenly lifts its head over a trifle, a sound only it can hear – a rodent, perhaps, or a very distant rifle shot: hunters are fond of this spot at all times of year. They’re not in Corsica, but here, too, people like to make out they’re stupid, bribe the gendarmes so they’re more amenable, wear camouflage to find thrushes and rabbits, even out of hunting season. They never catch anything amazing – it’s rare to get a deer, and besides, you’d get a hefty fine. The dog emits three snappy barks, its slobbering mouth turned up towards the table.

“Shut up!”

It’s the grandfather who’s shouted. The dog whimpers and lies down on its chain, its jaws slamming shut around nothing.

The grandmother turns to her granddaughters. “Johanna’s too young. She’s fifteen, so she can still go and bathe and enjoy the holidays. You can work with me, Céline. Not in the fields, of course, not in your state.”

The first public mention. The rest has been said in the limbo of mobile phone communication from daughter to mother, reported orally to the husband between one thing and the other, one evening two weeks ago.

“I cook for the seasonal workers. You’ll help me.”

Céline puts out a wretched smile in reply to her grandmother. She hasn’t got the choice, anyway. Things are closing in on her, but she has already worked here at the farm. She’s helped out in the fields: cherries, melons and grape harvests at weekends, since those are in early autumn and you have to go to school, after all. But that was different. She realizes that something’s changed, irremediably, and it makes her throat sting. She would also have liked to go bathing, loiter around the Cavaillon shopping centre, pinch lipsticks at Yves Rocher, ride on the back of scooters, run in the heat of the night. This is like a double punishment. Her grandmother’s tone is one-sided, her suggestion brooks no refusal, and it’s always been like that. Her grandmother has no gentleness. Like her daughter. Who knows if she ever had any in the past.