A first voice launches in. A voice that’s slightly too high-pitched for a man from the maquis, with the intonation of a wailing baby, a bit like Elmer Fudd, Tex Avery’s stupid hunter.

‘Natale’s got a brass neck. Having a go at Cassanu’s daughter-in-law …’

I hear collective laughter. A man with the nasal voice of a duck chimes in.

‘I have to say, Paul’s wife, she’d make me want to turn into a tree-hugger.’

Slightly anxious silence around the bowls of pitted olives.

‘Those tree-huggers have been trying to reintroduce wolves back into the woods for over twenty years,’ Daffy Duck explains. ‘I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on her little wolf.’

There’s more laughter, I’m not making it up. I recognise the voice of Basile, who tries to impose some kind of order.

‘Maybe he really does need an architect,’ the campsite boss suggests. ‘And even if Palma is getting a bit too close to that handsome Natale, she might have her reasons.’

A mini-hunter who must be around my age and whose voice hasn’t yet broken dares to intervene in the grown-ups’ scrum. He has the voice of Tweety-Pie. But I thank him for it. He asks the question as if I had prompted him.

‘Why would she have her reasons?’

Daffy Duck clearly has another good line up his sleeve. He guffaws even before delivering his response, which seems to be one of his favourites.

‘Petiot, in this corner of the world there’s a proverb that says: In La Revellata the shepherds bring in their animals in the winter, and their wives in the summer, the moment Paul Idrissi steps off the ferry.’

The laughter explodes in my face like a bomb.

Elmer throws another grenade before I can bury my head, my face, my ears in my arms.

‘You’ve got to understand. Paul gets bored up there with all those Parisiennes hiding out in the Métro. We’ve got wild game all year round, here on the Island of Beauty.’

‘Well he’s certainly landed himself some of the most beautiful trophies, even though he only hunts for two months a year.’

‘He could let his friends have a look in, some scraps for the hounds.’

Carpet bombing. The walls are collapsing around me. A siren sounds, but I can’t move, can’t escape, can’t take refuge in a shelter. An airtight box. Nothing but silence.

Basile’s voice emerges through the fog.

‘But Palma is pretty …’

‘Yeah,’ Daffy is off again. ‘He showed her his dolphins, and she showed him her whales, the ones in the top of her swimsuit.’

Loud laughter. Laughter raining down on my shredded body.

‘Still,’ Elmer chips in, ‘Natale could have found someone younger. And more importantly, less married.’

A sudden silence.

‘Shush,’ a voice murmurs.