Natale walked Clotilde to the car. Old Speranza was still cursing Palma’s memory as they left the cemetery, as if they were being chased away by a deranged spirit.

They kissed for a long time by the open door of the Passat. The concrete parapet that lined the road made it look like a station platform, it was almost as if a whistle was about to blow, signalling the departure of a train. Clotilde summoned the strength to joke about it.

‘My mother doesn’t seem to have been very well liked here. Not while she was alive, or during her life as a ghost. You were the only Corsican who loved her, from the sound of it.’

‘Not the only one. Your father loved her too.’

Touché!

‘I’ve got to go.’

One last kiss on the platform.

‘I understand. I’ll call you.’

She risked one last question. After all, she was the one driving the train.

‘The hatred of the Corsicans, Natale, the hatred of the Corsicans towards my mother when you and she were, let’s say, close. Your abandoned boat. Your marriage to a policeman’s daughter, does that have anything to do with this story? With this burden, this pressure, with the curses that all the old women of Corsica have threatened to put on you?’

He merely smiled.

‘Off you go, my princess, go back to the castle where you are imprisoned. Escape while your brave knight holds the witches at bay.’

~

Clotilde drove, her eyes misted with tears, distorting the cliffs that slipped by as if diluted by the sea. At each bend in the road the Revellata Peninsula appeared, drowned in a fog that existed only in her eyes. The damp landscape was washed out, the wet electricity poles twisted, but Clotilde drove slowly, at less than thirty kilometres an hour, so that she could see the face of Maria-Chjara on the posters on every other pole.

Eighties Concert, Tropi-Kalliste, 22 August, Oscelluccia beach.

The day after tomorrow. The same formula as four days ago. Cervone had no reason to change a successful recipe, particularly for holiday-makers who rarely remained in the same place for a long time.

But Clotilde couldn’t let such an opportunity go by. She had to go back and see the Italian singer once more. She had to find a way to talk to her, to get rid of the bodyguard outside her door, to make her admit what had happened with her brother Nicolas on 23 August 1989. Leaving the road, the damaged steering rod, their tacit silence. Only Maria-Chjara could confirm Cervone’s version of events. But how to make her do that? For the Italian, to confess was to acknowledge her own complicity, her direct responsibility for the deaths of three people, years after it had happened. She was bound to deny it. Even if by some miracle Clotilde managed to get close to her, she would deny it.