‘I haven’t seen them since we got back from the beach.’

‘Not at all?’

‘No.’

‘Have you tried texting them?’

‘Yes, but they’ve not replied.’

‘Maybe they’re in their rooms, or the games room?’

She shook her head. ‘I’ve checked already. No sign of them anywhere.’ She threw a look at Rowan on the far side of the pool, then bent down over my sunlounger. ‘I think Jake was a bit upset.’

‘Why? What happened?’

‘About what Odette said at the beach, that the boys had told her she couldn’t play with them.’

I lowered my voice. ‘I don’t think she meant anything by it, did she? Maybe she was just a bit confused.’

‘Jake hates liars. He gets so wound up when people say things about him, when they try to get him in trouble.’

‘I don’t think she was doing it on purpose, Jennifer. She’s only five.’

‘That’s perfectly old enough to know what a lie is.’

I sat up. ‘Look, do you want a hand looking for the boys?’

Her expression softened. ‘Would you?’

‘Of course. I haven’t seen Lucy in a while, either. Perhaps they’re all hanging out together somewhere.’

*

The late afternoon sun was still strong and my sleeveless top was starting to stick to my back with sweat. Jennifer and I walked on through the vineyard, looking for the three teenagers, green creepers high on either side of us, calling their names as we walked towards the woods.

At the edge of the vineyard there was an unmarked dirt path leading on through the trees. The path wound around a pair of towering oaks, their bark gnarled with age, past pine and tall, slender cypresses and olive trees that crouched low to the ground. The trees thickened as the path dropped into a dip, curving away, then up and around again, past a big standing rock and a fallen tree, exposed roots twisted like intestines spilling from a wound. A waist-high sign, faded and peeling with age, bore the word ATTENTION! in large red letters, above some other French that I didn’t quite understand. Below the text was an outline of a cliff face, rocks tumbling down the side.

It was cooler here, the occasional call of birds the only sound above the whispering leaves in the canopy of the trees high above. We walked on, Jennifer quickening her pace and me hurrying to keep up. Ahead, the trees thinned out into a clearing, an open area where the sun was stronger, a dusty spur of open ground where the trees seemed to stop abruptly. A shaft of sunlight pierced the thinning tree cover and I was momentarily blinded. Blinking and raising a hand to the light, I looked up and caught a glimpse of red through the trees. A T-shirt?

Jennifer broke into a jog, calling her boys’ names a bit louder.

‘Jake? Ethan?’

I joined in.

‘Lucy?’