Suddenly Lou didn’t want to come with us to the boat. She was going to play with Francis, she said, all day. They had agreed on that. I gave in. Far too easily. Because I knew what this meant, that we could be alone, Marguerite and I.

We walked to the boat, neither of us said anything. I didn’t look at her, only at the road in front of me, at the dust that was stirred up by the hot wind. We didn’t walk close to each other, didn’t touch each other, but nonetheless at all times I could feel her body beside mine.

Then we climbed into the boat.

She undressed. It was the first time I had seen her naked in broad daylight.

This time she didn’t remove my hands from her abdomen, from the stretch marks.

I wanted her to tell me, but she said nothing. Said nothing, but didn’t stop me either. Let me get close to her.

It had been a long time since we had showered. We were sticky, salty. A layer of dry dust coated our bodies, was between us, became a part of us, a part of it.

Afterward we lay there in silence. I couldn’t resist looking at the marks. I stroked them again. There had been someone inside her. But she wasn’t going to tell me about it.

Just as I didn’t say anything about Anna.

Anna. Suddenly I was unable to look at Marguerite.

My Anna . . . After the pregnancies her stomach had been round. But no stretch marks. And her breasts . . . She claimed they had changed. But they were the same as before. Small and round, they fit into my hand. The feeling of them against my palm . . .

Anna wasn’t shy. She could argue with me without any clothes on. We shouted and screamed at each other. Argued often, probably more often than most couples. She distracted me with her tits. Stood there with them pointing straight out. The young, light breasts. And then she might suddenly laugh, in the middle of the argument. Because she discovered how my gaze flitted back and forth, from the screaming mouth to the smiling tits that resembled two eyes in the middle of her body.

Marguerite sat up, reached for her dress. She pulled it over her head, covering her freckled, pale skin. Anna tanned easily. Golden-brown. She never used sunscreen.

A deep sob struggled out of me. I curled up, turned away. I couldn’t let her hear it.

“I’m getting up,” Marguerite said.

“Yes,” I said.

“You coming?”

“Mmm.”

But I was unable to move. I closed my eyes, could see only Anna.

Anna when we went running. Anna with August on her arm.

I had lost her. I had lost August. I left Argelès without them. What kind of man does such a thing? What kind of father?