Outside, the stink of charred wood had settled in the yard and the air hung thick with grey ash. Papa and four gardians were shovelling the blackened remains of the stables into a large trailer, their movements etched with anger as they worked. I donned a scarf over the lower half of my face and picked up a shovel. I laboured alongside them, the work heavy, my muscles protesting. I had grown lazy. Not much call for spadework in Paris, unless it was of the digging-up-dirt-for-clients kind.

When the trailer was piled high with burned debris and hauled away, I brought us all a jug of cold lemonade and just for a fleeting moment it was like old times. Sharing a drink and a joke. The sense of a job done. The fond camaraderie that is the mark of Camargue farmers. I had missed it. I cleaned up, changed into fresh shirt and trousers, then went to tend to Cosette.

I was exercising her inside the large barn, leading her on a rein at a slow pace to ease her back into action and watching how much weight she could place on her right foreleg, when I heard the engine. Cosette whickered a greeting and pricked her snowy ears. She knew the sound as well as I did. Papa’s truck.

*

I gave him fifteen minutes. That was all.

Enough time to get himself inside the house on his crutches. I didn’t watch. Enough time to settle himself. Then I kissed Cosette’s cheek and crossed the yard to the house.

‘Hello, André. How did it go at the hospital?’

‘All good, thanks.’

He didn’t look good. He looked as if the doctors had drained the blood out of him. Pale, white-lipped, and a sheen on his skin that sent a chill through me. He was stretched out on his bed and I wanted to straighten out his legs for him but knew he would hate it. Every time I looked at his crooked legs, every single time, I saw the van slamming into us in Paris. I saw strings of blood.

But the moment I walked into the room, his eyes brightened, gleaming with expectation. I was his eyes and ears. I was his legs.

‘What did the doctors say?’ I asked, taking up my usual place on the chair. The very fact that I now had a usual place in his room made me smile.

‘To hell with the x-rays.’ He saw my expression and added, ‘Okay, they were fine. No change.’

‘Will they operate again?’

He mumbled something.

‘Will they, André?’

‘Maybe.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘You don’t give up, do you?’

‘No. I learned from a master.’

He laughed. I’d made him laugh.

‘So, will they?’ I asked again.

‘They want to. They think they can improve my mobility.’

‘That is wonderful news, André. Why don’t you agree to it straight away?’