Jorge joins us on the grass and my nerves settle as I listen to him tease Léa and tickle her until she begs him to stop. Luca, finally sated with ice cream, falls asleep on the picnic blanket and I lie back on my elbows as the next band comes on, a local jazz quartet Jorge assures me is fantastic. Léa settles down next to him and I sneak a sideways look at them as they both watch the stage, Jorge nodding his head along to the beat and Léa attempting to copy him. His face and arms are tanned, his mop of light brown hair slightly bleached by the sun at the front, thin white lines in the crinkles beside his eyes. There’s some sort of official lanyard around his neck and I see his picture beneath the English word ‘Staff’ in bold letters. In my panic over Luca, I hadn’t noticed that at first.

‘Good, huh?’ he says to me, nodding to the stage, and I nod back. I rummage around in my bag to get out my phone to take a picture of the band. I press the camera icon on my phone and hold it up to the stage, take a picture.

‘Me and Jorge!’ Léa says. Jorge nods and puts his arm around her. I fill the frame with the two of them. Jorge’s gaze seems to bore into me. I take the snap and put the phone back in my bag.

‘You work for the festival?’ I ask him.

He nods. ‘I’m a booker.’

‘Meaning what, exactly?’

‘I listen to a lot of music. Go to see live bands, talk to venues and agents, try to find up and coming bands we can book for the festival.’

‘Sounds like an amazing job.’

‘It is,’ he says, and then hesitates. ‘But it’s torture at times, too.’ He looks towards the stage and I see his face darken momentarily before a smile returns to his lips. ‘I guess it’s like being a science teacher instead of a scientist. Or a stagehand instead of an actor.’

A nanny to someone else’s children instead of a mother yourself, I think. I wonder if he has kids. I glance at his hands and see he’s not wearing a wedding ring. Not that that means anything, of course. Neither am I. At our age there’s always baggage, even if it’s not visible.

‘So you play?’

‘Yeah, piano. I have a band. We gig for fun around the region.’

‘But you want more?’

‘Who doesn’t?’ He shrugs. ‘But I have to earn a living, and like you say, this is a pretty awesome job. Speaking of which, I should go.’ He checks his watch and gets up from the grass.

‘Oh, right.’ I hesitate. ‘Listen, you won’t… tell your mother, or the Chevalleys, will you?’

His eyes hold mine. ‘About what?’

‘About losing Luca.’