Jo overtakes Garance on the stairs. She runs the flat of her hand down the banister, a kind of white, rounded wall, like in Greek houses. Under her bare feet, concrete slabs with ochre patterns, cool and dry, like the kind her father sometimes lays in houses that aren’t his. She wants to touch everything here. From the walls, to the bookcases, to the lacquered body of the double bass she sees again in the lounge.

“Is it you who plays?”

“No, it’s my sister. I play the piano, which is on the other side.”

A vague gesture towards another part of the house and Garance leads Jo to the garden and the shrieking.

The pool is waiting for her, luring her, and she drops her towel on a deck chair, focusing on the blueness. No one’s paying attention to her, not even the bathers messing about. The pool is large enough for her to slip in and swim without colliding with anybody. Jo lets herself sink, cutting herself off from the sounds. The thumping of the bass still echoes under the water, like a large choir, but she can no longer make out the details.

It’s only after several minutes in the water that she finally worries about her sister.

When they were fifteen years old, Manuel remembers they used to like driving their scooters and squashing tree frogs on rainy days. They’d stream onto the small roads, numerous and suicidal, and make a happy popping sound under the scooter wheels. It’s not raining tonight. The heat is crushing him but Manuel no longer feels anything. His fists come crashing into Saïd’s face, which no longer looks like a face. He stares at the two bleeding slits that half open to look back at him. It’s them he’s addressing.

“Still nothing to say?”

He no longer expects an answer. All that’s important is the tension in his fingers and in his stomach, which he thinks he’ll soothe with every blow. Yes, it’s doing him good. After all, it doesn’t really matter who got his daughter pregnant any more. It’s too late. He’s had his chance, maybe or maybe not, but one thing’s definite, and it’s that he’s wasted it. He’s certain, convinced of it. All he has to do is remember the villa owner’s look, that of his father-in-law, and of his wife. The absence of his father’s look. So he’s going to make the shitty little Arab who thinks he’s superior, what with his car and his small-time wheeler-dealing, lower his eyes. That’s all he’s got left.

Patrick knocks back the rest of the whisky; he feels really awful, about to vomit. Powerless to put an end to what’s going on, he steps back. His hands are shaking on the empty bottle.

“Now stop it, you’re going to kill him.”