‘You’re wrong. It is because every time he looks at you, he misses Maman’s beautiful face, you are so like her. You remind him how much he lost when she died, but underneath it all, he still loves you.’

‘And André?’

I chafed the back of his hand with my fingers. ‘André is André. A law unto himself. But Isaac, I didn’t run away to follow in his footsteps, I went to university at the Sorbonne because it is the best in the country. I didn’t go to Paris just because André was there.’

Liar. Liar.

‘Anyway, you were never at home,’ I added. ‘You were only fifteen but always off at your political meetings and rallies. You had no interest in the farm.’

He stood up, breaking free from me. ‘Why are you here, Eloïse? What is it that has brought you back to the Camargue?’

I smiled. To make him stay. ‘Papa summoned me. He thinks that when the family is in trouble it needs to work together.’ I felt such a yearning to sit him back down beside me, to wrap an arm around his thin waist as lovingly as my mother had done to me in the exact same pew nineteen years ago. ‘Isaac, Papa doesn’t make it obvious, I know, but I’m certain he would value it if you would come out to the farm. Share a meal with us . . .’

He drew a hand through the air, cutting me off. ‘I know you mean well, but it’s too late. I’m sorry, Eloïse. Can’t you see?’ He tipped his head on one side as if he could somehow find another me, another Papa, hiding behind the pew. ‘Tell Papa from me that anyone who hands over his land to the American Air Force for nuclear weapons and a fleet of aircraft designed to destroy the Soviet Union is no father of mine. It is treachery.’ His young mouth twisted. ‘Treachery against France.’

‘No, Isaac, no.’ I stood to face him. ‘Don’t.’

But he retreated into the aisle. ‘Listen to me, Eloïse, don’t fall for all their blatant capitalist propaganda. The American bastards will destroy Europe if we don’t put a stop to their godforsaken plans.’

‘Isaac Caussade!’ A deep voice boomed out at us from the altar like the voice of God himself. ‘I will not suffer such profanity in the house of God.’

Father Jerome came sweeping down on us, his long Bible-black soutane flowing around him, and I thought as always of the wings of a crow descending to peck our eyes out. That flash of childhood fear came and went, a hangover from schooldays when the edge of a ruler would rap knuckles if their owner was found wanting in Latin.

‘Father Jerome,’ I said to divert his attention, ‘the town is all stirred up out there today.’