Some friends of his have come up to them, interested in the new girl. Côme lets them, because he also likes having an audience. It’s a piece of cake: he feels strong, ready to play executioner and protector. At the same time, he’s never forced anyone, right? He’s sure she wants it, that she’ll ask him. The prospect is driving him insane, and he’s getting a bit hard in his midnight-blue Speedos.

Drinking her beer in small sips, Céline thinks she was right to come. It’s a nice change from seasonal workers, and these people can certainly party. She sees neither contempt nor judgement in their eyes; she thinks they’re gorgeous and funny and they seem to find her attractive.

Céline is sixteen.

The Voltaire armchair is perfect. Manuel’s taken it from the lounge and carried it to the garage while Patrick was holding Saïd down on the ground, one arm twisted behind his back. The boy didn’t immediately realize how serious the situation was and kept arguing, humiliated but not worried yet. At least not very.

Manuel unrolls a length of insulating tape, binds Saïd’s wrists tighter to the armrests, then bandages him around the waist with the rest.

“Don’t, Manuel. Fuck, you’re insane, I don’t know why you…”

Patrick takes a gulp of whisky, puts the bottle in a corner, and picks up a PVC pipe with one hand. He has a strange expression as he looks at the young man tied to the Voltaire armchair. It’s almost funny, his head pressed against the red velvet with a halo of upholstery tacks, his arms on the carved wooden armrests.

“Did he say anything?”

Manuel shakes his head. His mouth is twitching with a nervous tic, a mechanical smile that lifts only one corner. An uncontrollable movement he feels throbbing in his cheek. Distraught, Saïd looks at one, then the other. “Shit, you’re mental, I haven’t done anything! You hear me?”

“What? What did you say?”

Manuel drinks from the bottle then puts it down on the ground.

“Did you just call us mental?”

The PVC pipe comes down to crack the boy’s cheekbone. “Bastards, fucking shits, you don’t know what’s waiting for you —”

“No,” Manuel whispers, breathing heavily, “you don’t know. You don’t know the fucking mess you got yourself into the day you touched my daughter.”

Saïd is taken aback, his mouth half open.

“The day you got her pregnant and carried on being all cocky and didn’t man up, you got yourself in the shit.”

The penny finally drops. “Céline? Shit, I’ve never touched Céline! Never!”