‘Yes, my darling. We were all thunderstruck. Your mother must have interpreted our silence as support for Salomé, but I think that most of all it was just surprise. Salomé had decided to go for broke, to make your mother understand that Arcanu wasn’t her place, that it never had been. However beautiful she might have been, Palma could be rejected and replaced by another. So far, in order to win your father back, Salomé had fought dress against dress, bikini against bikini, skin against skin, to prove that she could be just as pretty. But that evening she had taken it a step further. When she walked into the yard that night, Salomé was wearing her hair exactly the way your mother wore it, in a chignon fastened at the back by a black ribbon, the same make-up, the same dark line on her lips, the same bracelet, the same ruby necklace, the same perfume, Imiza, with its immortal scent. Your mother must have spent over an hour in front of the mirror to be the fairest of them all that evening at Casa di Stella, wanting to please your father … and Salomé had done exactly the same. Tendril for tendril. Brushstroke for brushstroke. Salomé had even taken her insolence a stage further. You must remember, Clotilde, that evening your mother was wearing a Benoa dress, the one that your father had bought for her in Calvi. Salomé was wearing the same dress! She had spent almost 300 francs on it, I found out later, on an outfit identical to her rival’s, to show Paul that in the same short, low-cut dress she could be just as seductive. Arousing, even. As soon as she arrived she handed the baby to Speranza, his grandmother, without saying a word. The conversations all came to a sudden halt, and it takes a lot to shut up fifteen Corsicans who have already drained five bottles of Clos Columbu. Only Cassanu dared to say anything. ‘Sit down, Salomé. Sit down.’ He got to his feet and drew up a chair, right between himself and me.

Clotilde looked out of the kitchen window at the empty courtyard of the farm, the pergola, the big holm oak. She couldn’t believe it had all happened here, on 23 August 1989, over the course of a few minutes, while she was asleep, because she’d spent the whole of the previous night spying on her brother, because she liked to isolate herself, because she hated endless family reunions. Behind her, Speranza got up to throw the debris into the bin and then came and sat down again, apron around her neck and knife in her hand, silently listening to the rest of Lisabetta’s story.