She would never know the truth for certain.

The tears were still flowing freely, and now she was driving at less than twenty kilometres per hour. A giant motor-home with an NL registration was getting impatient behind her, tail-gating her, apparently determined to push her towards the precipice if she slowed down any more. In a stupid reflex, as if to wipe away the watery landscape, she turned on her windscreen wipers.

It was only then that Clotilde noticed the envelope wedged between the windscreen and the wiper. A flyer perhaps? The bit of paper, clinging to the windscreen only by one corner, flew off after it had gone back and forth once more.

Clotilde braked hard.

The motor-home blasted its horn even louder than the ferry coming into the port of Bastia, a redhead on the passenger seat insulted her in Dutch and all the children in the back seat pressed their noses to the door and studied her as if she were a curious animal.

Clotilde didn’t care. She parked the Passat randomly in the gravel, with two wheels on the tarmac. Leaving the door open, she ran after the envelope, which was flitting from rock to rock. Eventually it caught on a bramble bush and she picked it up, scratching her forearms and cursing her insanity. Franck was right, she was losing all sense of perspective. Her emotions were becoming uncontrollable. She had almost killed herself over an advertisement, the special opening of a supermarket next Sunday, or a car-boot sale, a concert, perhaps even Maria-Chjara’s concert.

All for a piece of paper.

Her hands were trembling.

The envelope was white, apart from two words:

For Clo.

It was a woman’s handwriting. Handwriting that she would have recognised anywhere.

Her mother’s.

39

Monday, 21 August 1989, fifteenth day of the holidays
Broken-crystal blue sky

‘I took your advice, Basile, I went to see the dolphins with Natale.’

And I lay it on thick, believe me. The Euproctes bar is full to bursting, it’s drinks time, the Casanis and the Pietra are flowing and there are so many olives in bowls that all the trees on the east of the island must have been stripped bare.

There are probably about twenty clients here. All men. So I tell them about my cruise on the Aryon, about Orophin, Idril and their little ones, Galdor and Tatië. I confirm that Natale speaks to them, he must be a bit of a magician, and I add on a bit from The Big Blue which none of them has seen apart from the youngest ones, perhaps, and they probably only remember Rosanna Arquette’s ski-jump nose and the freckles on her bottom.

Go. Go and see, my love!3