The note-leaver had vanished. I felt utterly out of my depth and my instinct was to flee. Not to Paris. To flee home to Mas Caussade like a whipped dog with my tail between my legs, to search out André and lay it all in his lap for him to make right, the way I used to as a child. But I was no longer a child, I was a grown woman.

Should I report it to the police? No, no, going to the police was not an option. Too dangerous, because it would mean explaining why I might be in danger and that would involve André in it. How could I consider for even one fleeting moment adding to the weight of pain my brother carried each day, the pain I’d created?

As I unlocked the car and climbed inside, a fat blowfly stumbled inside with me and began to batter itself insanely against the windscreen. It was how I felt, battering myself against something invisible. I knew I couldn’t tell André about the note. I started the engine, took one final look around the square, and drove away with my guilt firmly settled on the back seat.

*

On the drive home, I focused more on the grimy rectangle of the rear-view mirror than I did on the bleached road in front of me. It was mid-afternoon, still hot and humid, the sun leaching the moisture out of me and making me squint.

No car behind me stayed there for long and there were none of the ones I’d memorised from the town square, though I admit that one black Citroën looks much like another. I was about halfway home and the road was empty, travelling straight as a bull-pole through the broad flat landscape I loved, edged by purple drifts of sea-lavender and raised up above the surrounding fields. The expansion of the vivid green rice crop, fed by a network of water channels, was made possible by finance from the post-war Marshall Plan. I could smell the familiar fragrance of it through my open window. It calmed me.

I was totally alone. In every direction I could see to the shimmering horizon. No houses, not even one of the old traditional thatched huts used by the gardians on this stretch. I liked being alone. It opened up my senses. I was able to see and hear more clearly, my thoughts came to me pin-sharp.

Just when I was starting to relax and think things through, a speck appeared in my rear-view mirror and grew larger at a startling speed until I could see it was a motorcycle. Its low-pitched growl reached me, setting the hairs on my neck on edge, but it hung back at around five hundred metres and came no closer. I sped up, pushing the 2CV’s engine to its limit, but the motorcycle kept pace easily.

What did it want?