In a wet white two-piece swimsuit, clutching the villa gate, Garance can’t help staring, eyes wide, at Céline’s full body, a T-shirt with Love don’t pay the bills stretched over her belly. She wavers, searches Céline’s body language for a sign to guide her reaction, whether she should be excited or not, and to help her find the right words. As she can’t think of anything to say, Garance makes up for it with a smile full of kindness, the way people can when life has often been kind to them. She shakes her drenched hair and smooths it with her palms.

“Come in. We’ve put the buffet outside. For now everyone’s bathing. Did you bring your swimsuits?”

The girls follow and discover a hundred-foot mosaicked pool filled with young people in swimwear, jumping into the turquoise water. Night is falling.

“I’m going to turn on the floodlights,” Garance says.

The girls follow her with their eyes as, blonde and perfect, she runs into the house.

“Do you know the others?”

Jo tackles the mass with her eyes, sweeps over it without really looking. “The guy smoking in the deckchair over there. And the two girls laughing, with their legs in the water. I’ve met them once.”

“He’s not bad-looking. What’s his name?”

“Côme.”

“Huh?”

“Côme.”

They fall silent. Céline goes to the buffet to fetch two beers. Glances travel to her, to her belly, her eyes, her belly, her breasts, then back to her belly. The conversations are half-hearted. She says hello then takes the tops off the beers with a cigarette lighter, aware of being watched. The crimped tops bounce on the ground and roll towards the pool. She doesn’t bend down to pick them up.

Jo’s feeling hot and her heart is beating fast. She suddenly wants to run away but the large swimming pool is beckoning her to plunge into the blueness, thwart the sweat and the prickling at the roots of her hair. Her sister hands her a beer.

The beams flood out from the bottom of the pool, splashing faces with a cinematic turquoise. A collective cry greets the light, and a handful of bathers leap into the water. They’re good-looking, all of them, and healthy, and that seems banal. Toned, smooth, tanned bodies meet and stick together in a joyous dance of bubbling hormones. Côme comes up to them and holds out his glass to clink with their beers. On his feet, he’s very tall, a head taller than Jo, and has a badminton player’s muscles. Céline smiles at him.

“I’m going to change in the bathroom,” Jo murmurs.

Côme giggles with his head cocked to the side, dimples in his face, still childlike despite his body language.