They don’t look at each other, and instead direct their gazes to the polluted, glistening eddies, as if the other bank is more interesting, even though it’s Orgon on the other side, a commuter town – a worse version of Cavaillon. No hope there; you must take the main highway that starts a hundred yards away and drive at least as far as Marseilles before you can even hope for an elsewhere that counts. They can hear the cars, the buzz of the roundabout that drowns out the river. At the heart of the roundabout there’s a giant melon, replaced with a flashing Santa Claus from 2 December. From the cove where they’re having a cigarette, throwing pebbles into the water, they can’t see the road, or the Decathlon, or the McDonald’s. They’re just guessing.

“Would you have preferred a boy?”

Céline shrugs without answering.

“You don’t care?”

“Don’t know. Maybe. I don’t know.”

“What are you going to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Will you go back to the lycée, afterwards?”

Céline shakes her hair and throws her cigarette into the Durance. “Makes me nauseous.”

“The cigarette or the lycée?”

“You’re a bitch. It’s you who makes me nauseous.”

They allow silence, familiar, to fall. There’s a light breeze whistling through the reeds. Then Céline says, “I don’t care about the lycée. I wouldn’t have passed the professional Baccalauréat anyway. I don’t care about quitting, in fact it’s better for me. You’re the family intellectual.”

“What?”

“Look, you even hang out with the posh kids from Saint-Jo now.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Jo’s laughter echoes softly; she leans back and lies down, resting on her elbows. “And you’re going to work with our grandparents all your life, great.”

“Maybe. In any case, Gran will be able to help me, because I’m not relying on Maman.”

“Clearly not.”

“I’ll look for a job. If I get a place in the crèche, I’ll work it out.”

She says it calmly, just like that, but in truth she’s almost relieved she doesn’t have to go back to school. The day of the corso fleuri, she saw perfectly well that things had changed, and not for the better. Even Manon doesn’t have a clue, gushing over Céline’s belly, going crazy over the kid on the way, like it’s going to be great, babies are so cute, and you’re so lucky! Céline hasn’t said anything, it was still better than the pity in other people’s eyes, the embarrassed smiles that said she’d toppled into another world and there was no returning from there.

“And you’re not going to give me a clue about the father?”

“No.”