‘I’m not. My husband has gone for a run, half an hour or an hour at the most, to Notre Dame de la Serra. I need to be back at the site when he returns. It’s … it’s complicated … I told him I lost an earring here. A big silver hoop. It’s not just an excuse, by the way, I really did lose it the other night, during the concert.

All the tiny wrinkles on Natale’s face began to move in harmony, as if, for all those years, they had been rehearsing a dance designed solely to make his smile irresistible.

‘Can I help you look?’

He took her hand. The gesture felt entirely natural. They walked slowly, their eyes lowered.

‘You remember?’ Clotilde asked.

‘Of course. Do you think I often took girls to my sanctuary?’

Oh yes, my handsome mermaid-fisherman, you shouldn’t have deprived yourself, in those days!

She stared at the sea.

‘Are there still dolphins?’

Natale’s eyes didn’t move from the sand. He didn’t reply. Clotilde went on. Afterwards, she would shut up, she promised herself. She would let him explain. She would just listen, as she had before.

‘Galdor and Tatië should still be alive,’ she said. ‘Orophin and Idril too, they say that dolphins can live to be over fifty. And that they have the memory of an elephant! Even better than the pachyderms, in fact. The longest amorous memory of all the mammals. I read somewhere that they’re capable of recognising a partner just by the sound of their voice, twenty years after they were separated. Do you know a single man who would be capable of that?’

Eyes in the sand. Still.

Why had she mentioned that stupid earring?

She studied the closed Tropi-Kalliste beach bar in front of them, the overflowing dustbins, the chained grey caravan. According to the posters, Maria-Chjara would continue her tour in the west of the island, Sartène the previous night, Propriano tonight, but she was coming back to Calvi in two days’ time.

Clotilde gripped Natale’s hand even tighter, as if to warn him about what she was going to say.

‘What is this madness? This squalid nightclub, these filthy sheds? Your pontoon, your nature reserve, your museum should have been built here. Explain it to me, Natale. Explain to me why Cervone Spinello won. Why he won out over your project.’

Disembowelled plastic bags were flapping through the air, beer-cans rolled about, it would take hours for a clean-up unit to tidy all this, and then it would all start again the day after tomorrow. How could her grandfather Cassanu have accepted this sacrilege, how could he have allowed this dump of a beach bar to thrive, rather than Natale Angeli’s dolphin sanctuary?

‘It’s an old story, Clotilde. It’s all in the past. Please.’

OK, don’t push him.

‘You brought my mother here too.’