“I’d like to go to the festival,” Jo suddenly announces.

Céline starts to breathe again, grateful to her sister for shifting the attention onto somebody else.

Her grandmother is surprised. “The Avignon Festival?”

“Yes.”

“What do you want to go there for?”

All eyes, full of suspicion, turn on Jo. Céline wants to give her sister’s knee a squeeze under the table for this extraordinary diversion; a wave of gratitude sweeps over her.

“They’re doing a play I studied at school.”

The faces relax slightly. Séverine tears strips from her cigarette packet.

“Theatre? You really want to go to the theatre?”

“Does the kid like theatre?” the old man asks.

Manuel really doesn’t like this ever-growing feeling that he’s losing his footing, that he understands things around him less and less. His wife, his daughters. He’s not in control of anything any more. Theatre, and what next?

Séverine shakes her head. “Avignon’s too far. I can’t take you there, with my timetable.”

“I’ll take the bus. Or else I’ll ask Saïd to drive me.” She turns to her grandfather. “He’ll have a few days off, won’t he?”

“Who?”

“Saïd.”

“Kadija’s son? The Arab who never takes his Ray-Bans off?”

She nods without smiling.

“Do you hang around with him?”

The old man doesn’t look pleased. Manuel is suddenly glad. Séverine gets annoyed. “The girls have been friends with him for sixteen years, Papa. They live just fifty yards down the road from us.”

The grandfather scowls and helps himself to another glass of red. “Kadija’s a hard worker.”

Manuel pushes his glass forward so the old man fills it, but his father-in-law doesn’t seem to notice. He bangs the bottle back down between the plates. Large wasps congregate at the bottom of the dishes or voraciously land inside melon peels.

“Moroccans are hard workers. In general.”

“Oh really?” Manuel asks, tense and mocking, already drunk.

He grabs the bottle abandoned by the old man.

“They give you less crap than Algerians.”

“That’s for sure.”

Manuel nods in agreement while pouring red wine into his glass – too quickly, so the wine splashes on his hand.

The grandfather doesn’t join in. He doesn’t like Arabs – who does, around here? – but today he refuses to side with his son-in-law in a clan agreement, a familiarity sanctioned by almost twenty years’ worth of Sundays and the empty bottles of Ventoux strewn over the table. There’s no getting away from the kid’s pregnancy. You don’t let that happen, not when you’re a father. It’s one thing if she sleeps around. But for God’s sake make sure the son of a bitch who gets her pregnant marries her.

Manuel lifts his hand to his mouth and sucks the drops of wine running down his wrist. He’s shrivelling inside. Inevitably, history repeats itself. And so does his rage, still restrained but insidious. The old man would almost say something good about that little shit Saïd just to piss him off, to rub it in that he’s no better than an Arab.