It wasn’t like the German to leave his house open like this. And yet it was hard to imagine that he might be hiding somewhere in the twenty-eight square metres of this cabin resting on breeze blocks. Strange … Clotilde reflected that if Herr Schreiber came back with his pétanque boules in his hand or his camera around his neck, she risked spoiling everything. The old German wasn’t the kind who’d be too happy about someone entering his place without permission; particularly if he’d spent part of the evening before looking for old photographs on your behalf.

Silly little fool, get out of here, go and peel your peppers, come back this afternoon, or tomorrow …

Clotilde was about to leave when her eye fell on one of the photographs stuck to the wall.

Her brother, Nicolas.

Clotilde walked over. In fact, among the hundreds of photographs taped to the walls of the mobile home, it wasn’t hard to spot the ones that covered the years he had spent there, from 1976 until 1989. Neither the tanned bodies nor the setting changed, the sea, the sand, the waves, Calvi citadel in the foreground, Cap Corse at the back; but the clothes, often nothing more than swimming costumes, clearly identified the decade in which each photograph was taken. The length of a pair of shorts, the brand of a swimming cap, the amount of breast or bottom covered by patterned fabric. It really was quite startling, in fact, so much change in the details of clothing, while apparently nothing else altered from one year to the next. Clotilde had always felt as if she got out the same clothes every June – the ones she’d put away the previous September.

Get out of here now, you silly fool.

She set down her shopping bag. She heard campers passing by outside.

In this particular picture, Nicolas was less than five years old. The photograph took her breath away. She saw herself too, in her mother’s arms; she was less than one, with cheeks as red as apples, a terrible little navy-blue hat with an elastic strap under her chin that looked as if it was annoying her, and chubby little feet that seemed only to have one desire, to walk in the hot sand or the cold water. No Papa in the photograph, she looked for him. She found him in another one: Nicolas was eleven and she was eight, it was the fifteenth of August, there were fireworks, and everyone at the campsite was standing on Oscelluccia beach. There was as yet no beach bar but among the sea of faces, Clotilde recognised an eighteen-year-old Natale, incredibly handsome, holding the hand of an amazing blonde with hair down to her bottom, a girl she had never seen before; she also recognised Basile Spinello, Sergeant Cesareu Garcia, Lisabetta and Speranza standing side by side.