Mama Palma has spread out her towel facing the biggest yachts. We’ve all done the same. The Blu Castello, whose varnished wooden deck I’ve been staring at for three hours – Madame with her chihuahua, Monsieur with his panama, Gino with his sailor’s jersey and captain’s hat, fat Teresa with the towels and the feather duster, a teenager my age who hasn’t budged from her deckchair – leaves me with one observation, which is beyond dispute.

Yachts are boring!

It’s true, when you think about it; the smallest plot in the shittiest campsite is bigger than the largest sailing boat. Even on a thirty-metre yacht, you can do the full circuit of it pretty quickly. A bit like being shut up in a bungalow all summer. There’s nowhere you can go to be on your own, no porthole that you can sneak out of, flirt through or slam the door of to lock yourself in; there’s water all around, nothing but water, kilometres of water. The more I look at the Blu Castello moored off the island, the more I understand this crazy and obvious fact: the people with the most money in this world lock themselves up in prisons, prisons they’ve bought themselves, prisons that cost millions, just because, when you’ve got millions to chuck around, you don’t want to walk down to the beach, sleep on a campsite beside a family that lets its baby cry, share the smell of barbecued sausages. And since they’re bothered by all this, they leave the island, they go into exile. So basically I think it’s cool to reject those water-bound toffs, even if they spoil the horizon a bit.

The teenage girl on the Blu Castello has got up from her deckchair, taken three steps, exchanged three words with her parents who are lying crammed together on the deck, she’s switched sides, port–starboard, three or four times, then gone back to sit in the same place.

I wouldn’t swap with her. Even if her parents love each other. Perhaps money helps with that at least.

I have cheated

You are cheating

He or she will cheat

Maman is asleep and Papa is looking around.

How can you cheat?

Cheat on the person you live with. And still go on living?

Do you cheat on someone because you’ve cheated yourself? Cheated on your wife, cheated on life, cheated on your dreams?

Will I cheat on life as well?

Will I cheat on someone too, one day?

42

20 August 2016, midnight

‘You?’

‘Were you expecting someone else?’

Clotilde didn’t know whether to answer, or yell her fury into the night.

They defied one another in the shadows, face to face in front of the shepherd’s cabin, like boxers puffing out their chests.

Dog and wolf.

Prey and predator.

Robber and cop.

Wife and husband.

She and Franck.