What a disappointment. He had discovered nothing at all.

He had opened the box of sent and received messages, read the texts, opened up the stored photographs, listened to a few scraps of downloaded music. For a few minutes he had immersed himself in the universe of this fifteen-year-old girl without finding anything interesting at all. Not a word out of turn against her parents. Not an inch too much skin revealed in the photographs. No bottle in the background, no boyfriend to arouse, no girlfriend to infuriate.

She was simply a good girl.

Comfortable in her skin. Well behaved.

Free of hatred, free of problems, as if life was nothing but a gift from a nameless benefactor, something to unwrap and appreciate, then smile and say thank you, blow out the candles without a hint of sadness, believing that Father Christmas would always be there, along with Maman and Papa, the Lord God or Buddha. A flawless adolescence. The contrast with her mother’s diary, written at the same age, was startling.

Was it just a matter of the technology? he wondered. After all, a phone connects you to the world, a diary protects you from it.

Or was it just this new generation?

He picked up a rock and smashed it against what remained of the Samsung. He was sure that if anyone was trying to find them using this phone, the last signal transmitted would be from this forest.

So no more hanging around. It was time to get going.

He glanced at the rusted doors of the Fuego then looked through the window at the faces of the two women, Palma and Valentine. The resemblance was striking. Tall, slender, straight-backed. They both had that classical beauty, that way of carrying their head, that proud expression, that regal assurance unaltered by the years, wrinkles, or a little extra weight. Elegant, attractive, comforting.

On that level, the contrast with Clotilde was remarkable. Clotilde Idrissi was pretty too, but her charm was based on very different qualities: she was small, energetic, non-conformist.

Perhaps, he considered, as he hurled the stone into the distance, the wizard who mixes together the genes at birth has only one supply per family, and he has to distribute the same ingredients as best he can, among parents and children, brothers and sisters, until he cooks up another batch. That way the genes could skip a generation.

He walked towards the Fuego, still thinking about the daughter, the mother and the grandmother. Clotilde had never been able to communicate with her mother, it said as much in her diary. She couldn’t communicate with her daughter either, he had observed her enough to be able to tell that.

The irony of it …

Because the grandmother and the granddaughter would have loved, appreciated, and understood each other. That much was blindingly obvious.

A pity.