‘I know where she is.’

Did I hear that right? Is he pulling my leg?

Clotilde screamed. Perhaps a message bouncing off the mountains would reach her husband quicker than a voice from phone to phone.

‘What? What the hell are you talking about?’

Lisabetta was standing beside her, listening to half of the conversation. Cassanu, still dozing, hadn’t heard his granddaughter’s cry. Speranza had gone back inside the farm.

‘Valou is ten kilometres away from here. Somewhere in the forest of Bocca Serria, above Galéria.’

For a moment Clotilde thought her husband had kidnapped Valentine. That he was holding her prisoner in the middle of the maquis, as her mother had once been held. That he was threatening her, that she would never see her daughter again. She let her rage explode, and the mountains trembled.

‘Tell me what you mean, damn it!’

At the other end of the line she heard Franck stammering, as if reluctant to confess something painful. In front of her, Lisabetta looked at her uneasily. She had vaguely grasped the fact that Valentine had disappeared.

‘What’s she doing there?’ Clotilde said. ‘How do you know she’s in that forest?’

‘I … I put a bug in her phone … A Spytic … It’s a tracking device that allows us to follow her, it means we can know her geographical coordinates at all times.’ His voice faded, like the voice of a child caught in the act. Only some scraps of words reached Clotilde. ‘Just in case … something happened to her … I’m … You know me … I’m always anxious about Valou … I didn’t mention it to you, you wouldn’t have agreed … But that’s what’s happened, Clo … Something has happened to her.’

Like a sun appearing suddenly from behind a cloud, Clotilde’s head was filled with clarity. A revelation. At first she felt a violent discharge of hatred, but it was swept away almost immediately by a huge wave of relief.

‘Did you put this Spytic in my phone too?’

‘Well …’

‘I don’t care, Franck, there’s no time to waste on this. I just want to know: did you put a bug in my phone as well, and is that how you found me three nights ago, in the maquis?’

‘Yes.’

She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth to prevent a flood of insults from spewing out of her mouth.

‘Call the police, Franck! Call the police and give them the coordinates from your damned tracking device. Make them close off the whole area, make them close off the forest of Bocca Serria. At least then your nasty trick will have achieved something. I’m on my way, I’m going back to the campsite. Where are you?

But her husband had already hung up.