He would pay for that, Clotilde promised herself. Franck would pay for that later. While he was talking, Franck had grabbed Clotilde’s arm and was forcing her to walk back down the hill with him. Clotilde resisted as best she could, keeping an eye on the shepherd’s cabin, which was now nothing more than a silhouette in the darkness. Orsu had melted into the mountain.

Her husband owed her an explanation.

‘You couldn’t have followed me this evening, Franck. No one could have followed me without a light, a light that I would inevitably have seen. You knew where I was going. So please, Franck, tell me. I need to know if you were the one who sent me that letter and brought me here. If it was you who …’

She was at the end of her tether. Someone was trying to drive her mad. And someone was succeeding.

‘Oh, shit! I just want to know whether it was you or my mother who wrote that letter!’

Franck stared at her, alarmed, almost frightened. Shadows played across their respective faces, like two actors in a badly lit black-and-white film.

‘Fuck it, Clotilde! React! I’m trying to make you understand that I’m going to leave you, because you kiss another guy the moment my back is turned, because you make love with that bastard as soon as I’ve gone to bed. Valou is sleeping in our house, not suspecting a thing, while you’re busy throwing it all away. Or we’re throwing it all away, if you prefer, and the only thing you’re interested in is your mother. Worse than that, your mother’s ghost! Christ …’ He tried to laugh. ‘I know that some men leave their wives because of their mother-in-law, but not a mother-in-law who died twenty-seven years ago.’

He stepped back again, pulling his wife’s arm; the cabin had disappeared into the darkness.

‘Do you have nothing else to say to me, Clo? Bury the dead, damn it! Even if you want to destroy us as a couple, you still have a daughter. Surely you must care about her?’

A veil lifted in Clotilde’s mind.

The man talking to her, barking at her, was a complete stranger. This was the man who had come on to her at that fancy-dress party, dressed, as if by chance, as Dracula. He was the one who had wanted to marry her. He was the one who had wanted to stay. All she had done was accept his presence, for all those years.

Accept, smile, say nothing.