‘And I’ll be the witness they need to get rid of. But I suspect you’re only here out of nostalgia. That happens sometimes, former visitors asking me about old photographs, for a wedding or an anniversary.’

He looked at his mobile phone again – it was almost a tic, because the radio was still broadcasting a series of jingles in German – then he opened the box.

For a second, Clotilde thought that Jakob was going to have a heart attack right there on the spot.

~

Valentine waited until it was her turn before throwing herself into the void. It didn’t look too difficult. First of all you had to abseil down seven metres, hang above the little platform half-way down the waterfall, then take a deep breath, hold your nose and jump. The basin below, the largest of the natural pools in the Zoïcu gorges, was three metres deep, according to the instructors.

Nils and Clara had already gone down. There was only Tahir ahead of her.

Valentine couldn’t have known. Perhaps it was better that way.

Valentine couldn’t have known that the carabiner holding the harness, the one that supported her weight, was about to break. That at the slightest sudden movement her safety harness would fail, and the clasp would give.

Valentine looked at the void with an excitement that left no room for fear. From the platform, Tahir had just leapt into the waterfall. His almost animal cry had changed into an explosion of laughter as soon as he surfaced.

Pure happiness. Valentine buzzed with adrenaline.

She couldn’t have known that the equipment she had been given a few minutes before leaving had been sabotaged.

It was her turn.

Jérôme, the canyoning instructor, put his hand on her wrist and guided her towards the void, passing the rope around her waist.

~

There was nothing in the box.

Summer ’89.

An empty file.

Not a single photograph, not a single negative.

‘I … I don’t understand,’ Jakob stammered.

He put his hand inside the box as if to check that it didn’t have a false bottom. It was almost comical. He climbed back on the stool and pulled out the boxes on either side to check that nothing had fallen out, but didn’t find anything.

He went on opening the nearby boxes, grunting Scheisse and verdammt. For him, finding that box empty was like watching a whole, well-ordered life being turned upside down; as if the contents of the rest of his files were going to fly away in turn, like a game of dominoes, toppling one another. Clotilde was about to tell Jakob to forget it. That it wasn’t his filing system that was at fault, that he hadn’t made a mistake. That a ghost had passed through this place.

As with her wallet in the safe; as with her mother’s letter, as with the breakfast table.