Then there was the choking sound of a diesel engine and a small green tractor appeared from behind one of the outbuildings. An old man was driving, with a teenage boy balancing on the trailer piled with plastic trays of asparagus. There was sand on the sunless white ends of the asparagus, stacked juddering on the trays. The door opened behind them, and Madame Orderbrecht shouted something from the doorway, words that sounded like German spoken backwards, and the old man, seeing her, raised his arm and waved. He and the boy stared at Bea and Dan as the tractor went past. The boy was skinny, with sun-bleached hair, his stick-insect limbs coming out of shorts too big for him and a T-shirt too small. He couldn’t have been more than fourteen, but his look was insolent. He had one hand in the gappy pocket of his shorts, so that his sharp hip bone showed, and the other was gripping the bar of the trailer. Through half-closed eyes he stared at Bea’s breasts, and twisted his head to keep looking as the tractor bumped on, past them, and out of sight. Dan was looking down at the envelope, and did not notice.

When they were clear, and almost back at the car, he said, ‘That’s the whitest woman I’ve ever seen. She made you look brown. The kid, too. And the old guy. Jesus, he looked like a duppy.’

‘Yes, I saw,’ said Bea.

‘They looked like freaks.’

He turned his head to try to see through the doors of the barn as they walked past. They got into their car, and drove away along the uneven track.

‘This car is so posh and clean,’ said Bea. ‘It’s embarrassing. Rent collecting.’

‘Yeah, whatever,’ said Dan. ‘It’s fine.’

The track reached the road. With one hand on the wheel, Dan looked into the soft envelope of cash, flicking his thumb over the notes.

Her parents were on their way, there was no time to go back to Paligny, they went straight on to Carrefour, on the ring road outside Dijon.

The supermarket was vast. Eggs. Bread. Fruit. Yogurt. Griff didn’t eat breakfast, just coffee and his early-morning walk. Tonic for gin. Washing powder. New, cheap towels, very white with bleach and petrochemicals. Cling film. Toothpaste. Steaks. It was probably more shopping than Bea and Dan had ever done at one time. Bea googled potatoes dauphinoise, standing in the queue to pay. Liv wouldn’t eat potatoes, never ate pasta, hated bread. Lights flickered over the line of tills, narrowing away along the row. Dan leaned on the trolley, looking up at her.

‘What time do you think they’ll be here?’ he said.

She was looking at something nearby.

‘What room shall we put Philip Roche in?’ he asked.