Was this some horrible new trap she was about to tumble into? A sequence of questions circled in her head, questions that someone had deliberately provoked, in an ordered way and with premeditation: that first envelope in bungalow C29, her stolen papers, that dog bearing the same name as the one she had owned in a different life, that table laid out for breakfast, the letter on her windscreen.

‘Clo, Valou, did you hear me? I reserved the 470 for the day. You’ll love it. The wind, the silence, the freedom …’

Cervone’s revelations didn’t answer any of these questions, even if they continued to crush her heart, even if she was haunted by the last expression she saw on Nicolas’s face, the expression that she was now able to comprehend: he had understood that he was a murderer and, in the same second, that he was going to die, that he would be executed. Might there be an explanation that connected those two insanities; Nicolas’s plan to seduce Maria-Chjara and the letters from beyond?

Only one, Clotilde thought. More insane than anything.

Her mother was still alive.

~

11 p.m.

Franck, after spending the evening checking his compass, his marine charts, his perfect little sailor’s manual, had gone to bed. They were getting up early the following day. Almost six months ago, he had booked the 470 for the twenty-first of August. Franck had left nothing to chance, he had obtained the papers he needed, done some training and, for a large chunk of the previous day, he had revised. Clotilde sat counting the lines of her novel, like watching the grains fall through an hourglass, letting her thoughts wander as she studied her husband. When you knew them well, adventurers must be quite boring people. Meticulous characters who left no room for chance, for the unknown, the unforeseen, whether they were climbers, surfers or skippers.

She watched her husband fold his napkin in four, put away the dustpan and brush, delicately put on his cap.

The reverse wasn’t true.

Not all meticulous types were adventurers.

‘Shall we go to bed?’

Franck had just finished ticking off his checklist for being a sailor for a day.

‘Coming, I’ll follow you. I just want to read for a bit longer.’

‘We have to get up early tomorrow, Clo.’

A barely veiled reproach. Clotilde took it with a smile. She was startled by her own confidence. By the ease with which she lied, or at least didn’t tell the whole truth.

‘I know. Tomorrow, you’re going to give me a day sunbathing naked on the deck of your boat, with an attentive man serving me frozen mojitos. That is the deal we made when you booked this last winter, isn’t it? You haven’t forgotten, my darling?’

11.45 p.m.