‘They’re Russian. They were on Clarisse’s boat.’

‘That is important to know.’

‘No women’s bodies? No sign of Clarisse?’

‘No. The fourth man is in marine clothes, so he might have been the pilot.’

I licked my dry lips three times before I got the words out. ‘No sign of André?’

‘No, Eloïse, I’m sorry.’ He curled his arms around me, drawing me close, rubbing his hands up and down my back to build some heat within me. His breath was soft on my ear. ‘He might have jumped.’

I jerked back my head. ‘What?’

‘André might have jumped from his boat just before it hit Clarisse’s.’ He gave me a smile and my heart started to beat steadily. ‘He might be alive.’

I breathed deeply, the early morning air scented with the salty tang of the sea and I caught a glimpse of the first glimmer of hope.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Two months later

The blush of pink wings filled the sky, skinny legs trailing behind, long necks thrust forward like rosy walking sticks. The flamingos were lifting off the water in the last rays of the setting sun, when the lagoon looked on fire and the shadows lengthened. We were all caught on the cusp between night and day.

I sat astride Cosette and ambled peacefully around the dense beds of reed that fringed the lagoon. A lurid green tree-frog crossed our trail and Cosette whinnied softly to tell me about it. We took this track every evening, sometimes with Léon at our side on Achille, to watch the thousands of flamingos leaving their feeding grounds to fly to their roosting sites for the night. I watched the scene with infinite pleasure and each time I saw the birds leave, I thought of how I had left for Paris because I thought my world lay there.

Foolishly, I’d thought I could live without the place that formed the bedrock of who I am. I gave Cosette’s neck a pat and with no direction from me she stepped off the trail into a dense knot of tamarisks and undergrowth where a silvery white egret was preening its feathers on the roof of a dilapidated hut. It was draped in sea-green moss and silvery lichen, leaning back into the foliage behind it as though trying to hide. Exactly like the person who built it.

I dismounted and loosened Cosette’s girth, so that she could graze in comfort.

Inside the hut lay some lengths of timber and a box of nails. I took a hammer off the rickety windowsill and continued the task I had started yesterday, replacing the rotten planks at the back. It was not my hut. It was André’s. He had built it in the days when he ran free on the marshes, but it had slowly shed its sturdiness over the years.

I hadn’t heard from André. I didn’t expect to.