She didn’t understand. She simply didn’t understand. David was not interested in politics. Once he had argued with a doctor who kept the Maréchal’s portrait in his surgery. And he had read without finishing it, Henri Alleg’s La Question. That was the sum total of his political activity. She hurled the words at the man who held her arms. Merimée did not hear. A tiny grimace contorted his face.

That night was the night of her husband’s death, and of her son’s conception.

A thud startled her. The fisherman’s dog was beating his tail against the door. His tail swept through a bucket of Stargazer lilies, spilling a lily to the ground. He spread the pads of his feet and rolled his tongue along the stem. The poor thing wants water, she thought, and she filled a bowl from the kettle. The dog drank noisily. Then, trailing his lead behind him, he trotted out into the square, reaching the mechanical rocking horse at the same moment as Senator Zamora and Pablo.

Marie Amaral watched Senator Zamora crumple onto his haunches. He was inspecting the collar. The dog lifted his nose and licked the Senator’s face. “Oy!” exclaimed Zamora, crinkling his eyes. He fell backwards onto one hand, wiping his cheeks with a sleeve of his green cardigan, laughing.

Inside her flowerstall, Marie Amaral also laughed. If ever she let herself go again, it would be to a man like Senator Zamora. People are happy with those they understand. More than anyone Senator Zamora understood her. He was the only person in Abyla she had told about the French soldier called Merimée.

She had told him five years before, when Abyla was invaded by the tunnel workers.

She told him one day, out of the blue, after walking into him in the Calle Camoes. “Marie Amaral!” exclaimed Zamora, who had been playing dominoes. He stood on the steps of the Club de Pensiones and raised his hat. When he saw her face he was moved to take her arm.

“I don’t want to join the paseo, Teodoro.” She felt a stitch in her side.

“Then a walk by the sea?”

“That would be fine.”

“Would you like a drink?” asked Zamora. They were passing the Café Ulises.

Marie Amaral shook her head. Silkleigh would be there.

They walked past the construction site, parallel to the shore. “Is it the tunnel?” he asked, with a shudder.

“Teodoro, can we talk?” This time it was she who held him. She led him onto the beach. “Sit on that,” she said, offering Zamora a rock. She squeezed onto the rock beside him.

“Well, Marie?”

Looking straight ahead she told him of Periclito’s father, the OAS officer from Strasbourg.

Zamora listened, his long legs stretched out in the sand, crossed over at the ankles, his chin on the back of his hand, his hand on the chest of his cardigan.

In a strained voice she said, “Sometimes I think does it really matter?”

“Have you told Periclito?”