When Jo comes out of the house, Saïd doesn’t see her. He’s got his back to her, thirty yards away, his buttocks pressed against the side of his car. Jo gives her sister a sign and walks quietly to the paved path. While waiting for Céline to climb out through the window, she watches a wave of bats skimming the tops of the cherry trees and diving under the roofs of the crumbling houses along the fields. It’s like the flight of ashes over blazing paper. Jo quite likes that, it makes her a little sad, she doesn’t know why, though it’s not an unpleasant sensation. An interlude of pain and fulfilment – beauty often has that effect on her. She’s still young: it will take some time before she’s able to identify the inexpressible, these oases of the sublime amid the chaos, these fleeting instants that save you.

“What are you looking at?”

Céline wipes the sweat from her temples and above her lip, looking at her sister. A little out of breath, she starts talking, lifting her hair with one hand and securing it with a clip. “I almost can’t get over the wall any more, with my belly.”

“You’ve changed your earrings?”

“Maman thought they looked pretty. Made me suspicious.”

In front of the cross at the entrance to the village, a white Laguna is waiting for them. Garance’s sister is punctual.

The Foreman

The Foreman

It’s been brewing since the morning: a crappy atmosphere and people talking behind his back, he’s sure of it. Manuel looks at the others without warmth and works in silence. Every so often, Patrick taps him on the shoulder, but not too often, because there’s still tension between them. Now he knows about the trafficking with Saïd, it’s a bit better: Manuel explained on the way to the building site. He picked him up in his truck at the junction with Coustellet, outside the tobacconist, and came out with it on the way. No Arab is going to mess up our friendship. The other man didn’t say anything, kept his teeth gritted and squinted at the end of the road while Manuel talked. And now, in between spadefuls of cement, Patrick can’t help coming back on the offensive.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know, the first time it was just on an impulse, and since the kid was working with second-hand goods, I mentioned it to him.”

“You could have included me in the plan, you know I’m not exactly rolling in it.”

“He said I should keep it to myself.”

“Fuck, Manuel…”

“Yeah, I know, I know.”

They fall silent; the afternoon sun is scorching their skin. Their backs are brown, like those of the Arabs.

“What are you going to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“With that little shit – what are you going to do?”