‘Heavens no! We only got it yesterday. Fred, will you get it for me? It’s on the fridge.’

The Giant went inside and then came back out holding an envelope. His wife pressed herself against him as she read out the address.

Clotilde Idrissi

Bungalow C29, Euproctes campsite

20260 La Revellata

Clotilde’s heart raced for the third time, even faster than before. She almost tore off the olive branch.

‘We’ll need to see some ID,’ the Giant said, laughing. ‘We were going to take it to reception, but since you’re here …’

Clotilde’s damp fingers closed around the letter.

‘Thank you.’

She swayed along the sandy path. Her ballet flats left twisting curves as she walked, like a skater sliding over a frozen lake. Her eyes were fixed on her surname, her first name, the address on the envelope. She recognised the writing, but it was impossible. She knew it was impossible.

Without planning or even thinking about it, Clotilde went on through the campsite. She needed to be on her own to open this letter and she knew of only one place that would be secret enough for that. Secret and sacred. The Cave of the Sea-Calves. A hole in the cliff that could only be reached by the sea, or directly from the campsite via a small earthen track; a cave where, as a teenager, she had taken refuge a thousand times to read, dream, write and weep. She loved to write when she was young, she was even quite gifted, that was what her teachers and her friends had said. But then the words fled abruptly. Her talent hadn’t survived the accident.

She descended to her hiding place without any difficulty. The sand-and-gravel path had been replaced by a flight of concrete steps. The walls of the grotto had been defaced with lovers’ graffiti and obscene messages, and the place now smelt of beer and urine. It didn’t matter. The view of the Mediterranean, from inside the cave, remained the same: vertiginous, making the occupier feel like a seabird ready to plunge on any prey that ventured to the surface of the water with a simple flick of the wing.

Clotilde set down her shopping, went a little way inside the grotto, then sat down on the cool, almost damp rocks and slowly tore open the envelope. Trembling, the way you might open a love letter, even though, as far as she could remember, she had never received such a thing. She had been born a few years too late. Her suitors had flirted with her by text, by email. Digital declarations had been new and wildly exciting in those days but there was nothing left of them today, not a line, not a single note slipped into a book.

Clotilde’s thumb and index finger extracted a small white sheet folded in four. She unfolded it. It was a handwritten letter, a careful hand, like the writing of an elderly schoolmistress.