Too late, Clotilde thought. Too late, my darling.

Just a few seconds too late, so that her husband’s words sounded less like compassion and more like a man suddenly excited by the heat. A civilised male, who still stores away his roofbox and protects the bodywork of his car before going to hump his female.

‘Now what, Franck?’

Franck put a hand on Clotilde’s waist. Neither of them was wearing very many clothes. His hand climbed up towards her blouse.

‘Shall we go to bed?’

Clotilde got up and took a step backwards. Gently. Without offending him. But without giving him hope either.

‘No, Franck. Not straight away.’

She stepped forward and took her towel from the line and picked up her wash bag.

‘I need to take a shower.’

Just before she reached the path, Clotilde turned towards her husband one last time.

‘Franck … I don’t think we’ve survived that accident.’

He looked at her stupidly, like a lion that had allowed a gazelle to leave the watering-hole without even pursuing it.

Without understanding what that phrase had just done to their conversation.

The campsite was barely lit. Having passed the only light on avenue B, the one where five almost Finnish-looking chalets had been erected six months earlier, Clotilde passed in front of the last pitch reserved for tents. A group of bikers lay there in a circle, beer in hand, arranged around a camping gas-stove totem pole, their bikes parked under the trees like a troop of thoroughbreds.

Like absolute freedom.

A perfume shot through with melancholy.

As Clotilde walked across the patch of ground, a dozen heads rose to greet the passage of the beautiful woman, in a weary horizontal Mexican wave. Clotilde’s skirt reached half-way down her thigh, and the three open buttons of her blouse revealed the first swell of her breasts.

At forty-two, Clotilde knew she was still attractive.

Petite, yes. And slight. But with curves in the right places, curves where men like to find them. Since the age of fifteen, Clotilde had barely put on four kilos. One in each breast, one in each buttock. Prettier today than yesterday – in her mind at least; in other people’s eyes, too. She had never needed to join a gym or go to a swimming pool to keep her figure, it was just the result of everyday training. A healthy mother in a healthy body. Pushing a full shopping trolley, sprinting to school at pick-up time, bending and stretching by the dishwasher, the washing machine, the tumble drier …

Combining useful with easy on the eye, isn’t that right, Franck?