8.57 a.m. The campsite minibus was waiting for them. Clotilde and Franck walked towards the car park, weighed down by heavy bags. Valentine came after them, eyes fixed on her mobile phone as if she had downloaded a GPS app that would prevent them getting lost in the campsite.

Franck was running away.

He was scampering off, going underground, sailing away on a sloop while the boat was sinking. Was this line of thought, Clotilde wondered, a way of denying that she was the one who had cheated on him? That she was the one who had provoked all this? But still she couldn’t feel guilty. Everything that was happening seemed to have been planned years ago; she was nothing but a toy. She couldn’t help thinking that Franck had spied on her, that he had hidden part of the truth from her; that he was basically the best placed to have organised everything, from the theft of the papers from their safe to the laying of that staged breakfast table. That he was trying to drive her mad. That he had prevented her from seeing her mother the day before. That today he was stealing her daughter. That he was angry with her for having run off for a few hours to see Natale, while here he was, disappearing for several days, and she didn’t even know where he was headed.

It was Franck who had imposed this break, to give himself time to take stock. To protect Valou, he had claimed. Clotilde hadn’t said no. After all, it was what she wanted too. Some time to investigate.

Marco the driver was standing in front of the minibus.

‘We’ve got to go …’

Clotilde kissed Valentine, then stood in front of her husband like an idiot.

‘Will you call me? Promise you’ll call me?’

‘If we have any coverage in the Bermuda triangle,’ Valou said without putting away her phone.

The minibus disappeared off down the road. Franck had arranged with Cervone Spinello for them to be driven to Calvi harbour, where they would pick up the 470, leaving the Passat for Clotilde. The only words he had addressed to his wife that morning concerned the car – the papers in the glove compartment, the oil level, the tyre pressure, the key to the petrol tank; she had only half-listened, apparently already familiar with the workings of an engine. Franck was playing a part too, that of the husband whose pride had been wounded but who was making it a point of honour to remain attentive.

His male alter ego.

As stupid as she was. And perhaps more cynical. As he made his recommendations, he hadn’t been able to stop himself from showing her how to work the reclining seats.