But she didn’t even crack a smile. ‘Don’t ever doubt it, Eloïse.’

*

I dismantled, cleaned and reassembled my gun. Even though it hadn’t been fired. It made me feel better. I told André about the fire on the marshes, about the radio, about Léon’s theory that it was a Communist cell.

I didn’t mention Piquet. I’m not sure why. I didn’t want him to jump at every shadow in the yard or at every creak of a stair the way I did.

I worked on the farm the next day. I rose at five o’clock in the morning, took a silent breakfast with my father, then did the job of a gardian. I worked all day till the sun was exhausted and spilled out of the sky and my limbs ached from the unaccustomed hours in the saddle. If anyone was watching – with or without a camera – they would see nothing but me with the bulls, me with my father, me with the gardians. Never me on my own. All day I stuck to my companions, as Clarisse would say, like horse-shit.

*

That evening when I rode into the yard, stinking of sweat and bulls, I was surprised and pleased to find André sitting outside. A stiff breeze was blowing that had shifted the mosquitoes and scoured the sky to a blue that was so vivid it hurt the eyes.

André was tucked out of the wind in a nook between barn and house. Seated in an ancient chair of woven reeds, a book on his lap, with one of the feral cats regarding the world with suspicion from under his seat. I dismounted, trying not to look too stiff and sore, and nuzzled my face against Achille’s velvety muzzle, his long tongue licking the salt off my cheek. Around me Papa and three other gardians were swinging easily out of the saddle and leading their horses over to the stone trough for water.

As I flipped the reins over Achille’s head I saw André watching me with an odd expression on his face. I waved. He waved back and called out, ‘You look happy.’

It startled me. Happiness was not something I associated with Mas Caussade these days. Yet when I let his words settle in my mind, I knew that he was right. This ache and sweat. These men and horses. This smell of salt marshes in my nostrils and taste of the Camargue wind on my lips. This was a brief spike of happiness.

*

The telephone call came late that evening; I was reading. My father put down the piece of dogwood he’d been whittling into the shape of an owl and answered it in the hall, his voice a low rumble, brief and polite in tone. His footsteps returned across the tiles.

‘Who was it, Papa?’

The telephone rang infrequently, never in the evenings. I hoped it wasn’t Clarisse.