His daughter opened the pot of jam with an energetic twist of her hand, bit into the bread with gusto, living life to the full, preparing to devour the day with a hearty appetite, after a lie-in and a sunny breakfast. A gilded holiday. A dream life. And yet Clotilde couldn’t shake this idea: that Valou was desecrating every object she touched. Destroying, with each movement, a secret, sacred order.

Franck was right; she was going mad.

~

‘Isn’t your husband here?’

‘No, he went diving in the Gulf of Galéria.’

Captain Cadenat had taken over three hours to get there. Franck had given up waiting after less than an hour. The policeman had said on the phone that he didn’t understand the business about the breakfast table, but that he would come anyway, not least so that he could sort out the story of the stolen wallet once and for all. He had made vague inquiries, but not found anything. No clues, not the smallest hint of a trail.

He had been pacing around the bungalow for less than two minutes.

‘What about your daughter?’

‘She must have left, she’s supposed to be going canyoning.’

Cervone Spinello was standing close by and he nodded. Half the kids from the campsite had gone off in a minibus to spend an afternoon in the gorges of Zoïcu.

‘I don’t see what else I can do, Madame Baron.’

Take fingerprints, you idiot! Then compare them to the prints of all the tourists in this campsite, because one of them must have played this trick on me. Question witnesses, anyone who happened to be passing by my bungalow this morning. And above all, stop treating me as if I’ve got some kind of learning difficulty.

The rugby three-quarter back exiled on the Isle of Beauty stared at her, his arms dangling by his sides. Cervone had briefed him about the whole story. The accident twenty-seven years ago, the memories returning, the survivor losing her marbles just a little.

Cervone rested a hand on the policeman’s shoulder. A gesture from one man to another. The post-match complicity between the thirsty sportsman and the guy who’s paying for the next round. ‘Can I get you a glass of something before you head off?’

The policeman didn’t say no.

As she watched them leave, Clotilde understood that she would never be able to rely on the help of the police, or anyone else. That she would have to get by on her own. Alone, even if that meant she had to plan a long series of emergency meetings, interview witnesses, question them and get them to talk.

That bitch Maria-Chjara who had slammed the door in her face, as if she had seen a ghost.

Her grandfather Cassanu, who had known about the sabotage of her parents’ car from the beginning.

Natale. Natale who also had a ghost of his own to show her.