‘A marinade? Does that sound good? I’ll pop to the market and make that at lunchtime. It’ll make a change from chips.’

It was all Franck was waiting for, in fact. For everything to return to normal. For her to be a normal wife again. For them to lead a normal life. For today, for today at least, she could play the part.

‘Are you coming with me? Valou? Franck?’

No reply. She was off to get the shopping on her own.

Mission accomplished. A normal life.

~

Even though her shopping bag weighed a ton, Clotilde was particularly proud of what she had found: peppers and olive oil for a piperade, marinated ribs of beef stifatu style, mangoes and pineapple to make a fruit salad. She would ask Franck to light the barbecue, so that everyone could play their part to the hilt in this sunny stage-play – the Baron family holiday. Waiting at the till of the Intermarché supermarket in Calvi, which must have made 80 per cent of its takings during the two summer months, thus justifying the interminable queue, she had scribbled a list of questions on the back of her shopping list. With no answers.

Who had written her that letter signed P.?

Who had stolen her wallet?

Who had named the Arcanu dog Pacha?

Who had laid the breakfast table yesterday?

Who had taught Orsu the way to use the mop?

Who had sabotaged the steering of her parents’ Fuego?

Who had sabotaged the clasp on Valentine’s harness?

Who was the ghost that Natale had seen, at 9.02 p.m. on 23 August 1989, at Punta Rossa?

It couldn’t be the same person. It couldn’t be her mother.

It couldn’t not be her mother, for at least half of the answers to her questions.

Franck was probably right, if you wanted to be happy you were better off making a shopping list than a list of questions, concentrating on insignificant ingredients rather than the blank page on the other side.

Only reading the recto of life.

And maybe slipping a lover into your trolley.

While weighing up the consequences of her resolutions, she couldn’t resist tweaking reason a little; a detour of less than thirty metres on the way back, taking Alley A rather than C, and passing by mobile home A31, just to see if Jakob Schreiber was there, if he’d had time to recover the photographs from that cloud of his.

Not to look at them: just to ask him.

Nobody there.

‘Jakob?’

Perhaps the old German was deaf? Perhaps he was listening to his tedious radio programme? Question seventy-two, win a trip to the moon.

‘Jakob?’