Inside, I drift around the bed, trailing my hand over the duvet cover. Several framed photos sit atop a chest of drawers. One’s of a younger Léa sitting on a sofa with baby Luca in her arms. Another, slightly grainy, shows two women on a bench by the lake in the sunshine, laughing. They look happy and relaxed, and I wonder who they are. A third is a photograph of Michel and Julia on their wedding day. I pick it up. They’re young, maybe twenty-five or so. Michel wears a grey suit and light pink tie, and his thick hair is gelled back in a way that’s unlike how he wears it now. The self-consciousness of that gel makes me smile. Julia is stunning in a floor-length ivory dress that’s nipped in at the waist and flows out into a wide skirt. She’s wearing a bit too much make-up, but she looks amazing nonetheless.

They look amazing together.

I think of me and Patrick on our wedding day. We certainly didn’t look like that, but we were good together, too. I remember how he looked at me like he couldn’t believe his luck. I remember how happy I felt, that I was finally embarking on this adventure called marriage, emulating my parents in this, even if I’d never had the ambition to emulate the heady heights of their careers. I thought our marriage would last as long as theirs had, that we’d have kids for them to be proud of, but in the end I failed at that, too.

I put the photo back down on the chest of drawers.

Would I have failed so badly if I’d grown up out here instead?

I don’t know what compels me to go from looking to touching, why I can’t stop myself doing something I shouldn’t. It’s like I’m searching for something I can’t name, some clue about Julia’s life that might just provide the answer to mine, the secret to making everything okay again, to achieving what she has. I walk over to Julia’s bedside table and open the top drawer beneath it. It’s crammed with make-up, packets of earplugs, hairbands, lip balms. I pick up her contraceptive pill packet and see she’s taken today’s.

What I am doing?

There’s another packet of prescription medication but it’s all in French and I can’t make out what it is. Sleeping pills?

A sudden sound catches my attention and I drop the packet back in the drawer, heart going double speed. I wait, listening, but there’s nothing, only the radio, still on in the living room, the DJ wittering away in French. It must have been outside.