Standing motionless and unblinking, ringed by a shimmering halo of sunlight, she looked like a marble Madonna you might find in an old Italian church.

“Why are you here, Thomas?” she said. “You don’t have a book to promote at the moment.”

“Couldn’t you at least pretend to be happy?”

“Is that what you’re doing, pretending?”

I sighed. We were going in circles. Both of us had considerable unspoken bitterness. For a split second, I almost told her the truth: I killed a man, his body is walled up in the school gym, and by Monday, I might be locked up for murder. Next time you see me, Mom, I might be flanked by two burly cops or behind the glass wall of a prison visiting room.

It’s unlikely that I would have done it, but she did not give me a chance. Without gesturing for me to follow her, she had turned and was on her way up the steps. She had obviously had enough, and so had I.

For a moment, I stood there alone on the terra-cotta tiles of the terrace. Hearing voices, I wandered over to the wrought-iron balcony overgrown with ivy. My father was talking to Alexandre, the elderly gardener who also took care of the swimming pool. The pool had sprung a leak. My father thought it was near the filter but Alexandre, more pessimistic, was talking about digging up the lawn to get to the pipework.

“Hey, Dad.”

Richard looked up and gave a little nod as though he’d seen me yesterday. He was the reason for my visit, but as Alexandre wandered off, I decided to go and rummage in the attic.

2.

Well, an attic in a manner of speaking. The villa didn’t have an actual attic, but it had an enormous cellar accessible from the garden, almost a hundred square meters that no one had ever thought to organize, so over the years it had turned into the family’s junk room.