After the two-hour walk down to Arcanu Farm, Cassanu had been exhausted. He had collapsed on a chair in the middle of the yard, under the shade of the holm oak. Mamy Lisabetta had listened to his hoarse breathing and, ignoring his protests, had summoned Dr Pinheiro, whom he normally refused to see for anything other than his anti-flu vaccine. Pinheiro had immediately called an ambulance and ordered that the patriarch should undergo a period of extended observation, then a rest cure, at the Balagne Medical Centre. Clotilde had felt sorry in advance for the unfortunate nurse who would be given the task of telling Cassanu that he would have to spend a few more days in bed after the initial observation. At the age of almost ninety, the Corsican still walked several kilometres a day, or swam a few hundred metres.

Clotilde turned away from the window.

‘I came to see you, Maria, the other day after the concert, without my escort, and you wouldn’t open the door to me then.’

‘But that evening you weren’t accompanied by Brad Pitt.’

The Italian woman stared directly into the eyes of Natale, who was sitting on the second armchair, which was apple green.

Ill-shaven and his fair hair tousled, in his haste to join Clotilde, Natale had pulled on a pair of jeans with holes in them and a white polo shirt with a loose neck. Calm and handsome, he emanated a feline strength that contrasted with the brute force of the big bears planted outside the door. Clotilde tried to extinguish the embers of jealousy that were burning in her belly, but Maria-Chjara was taking it upon herself to stir them. She sat down on the little stool in front of her dressing table: a large mirror, a basin and dozens of coloured glass bottles, cotton buds, amber phials, tweezers, and sticks of make-up in every shade of red, purple and ochre.

‘What a pleasure,’ the singer continued, ‘old friends dropping in unexpectedly for tea. But you’ll forgive me, I must get ready. My concert begins in two hours. My audience awaits me!’

She winked with amusement at her mirror, clearly in no doubt about the motivation of the pre-pubescent teenagers who came to see her diving into the pool in a transparent white bikini. Clotilde took one last look outside at the hooded men, then pushed back the curtain.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I had to use force to get a meeting, but …’ The singer had slipped the leopard-skin dressing gown from her shoulders. It hung on the chair like an abandoned hunting trophy while Maria-Chjara, wearing only a pair of red panties and a red bra, offered them an unrestricted view of her back, and the rose tattooed from the curve of her neck down to her bottom. The dressing-room mirror brazenly exposed her other side.