Valou was trying desperately to keep herself horizontal on the surface of the water, but the waves were too powerful, rocking her back and forth before exploding against the rocks. Each one seemed as if it might drag her under, each one covered her as it swept past, but Valentine reappeared as soon as the wave subsided.

She was clinging on.

How can you cling to a void? To liquid?

Clotilde shouted, since her daughter had no voice.

‘Damn it all, is no one else going to jump in?’

The men hesitated.

The opening in the rock was narrow, the drop vertiginous, there were so many boulders sticking out of the water that you would have had to be a professional diver even to think about risking it. Even a good amateur hadn’t a chance in ten of making it, without missing and hitting the rocks.

Franck was the first to climb over the parapet.

‘We must be able to get down. Find a way, jump from lower down.’

He slid a few metres on his bottom, holding on to the branches of the few clumps of broom that grew among the rocks. The four policemen followed him.

‘Quick!’ Clotilde cried again.

Papé had just resurfaced. He looked exhausted, his body racked by coughing, spitting water, blood, his guts, but he was holding another body. With the last of his strength, he lifted it up to the surface.

Maman!

Eyes closed. Unconscious.

But she was breathing, she was definitely breathing. Because if Papé was trying to keep her alive, to save the woman he had hated so much, the one he had sentenced to life imprisonment, it was because she was alive!

This time, Cassanu didn’t dive again. He passed an elbow under Palma’s arms, the way you might support a floating package, a deflated mattress, a sagging life-jacket. With his other arm, he tried to reach Valentine.

They would only be able to survive like that for a few moments.

Franck and the policemen were stuck half-way down. Trying to climb down had been a very poor idea. Without equipment, there was no way of doing it – there were no further bushes to cling to, the walls of the inlet were almost vertical, and there were other rocks below so it was impossible to jump. The one narrow fissure that also led down to the inlet was back up level with the road. They only noticed it now. Too late. They had to climb back up.

Still no sign of the firemen.

It’s hopeless, Clotilde thought.

Well, as there was nothing else for it … After all, Cassanu had given it a go.

Clotilde stepped forward and prepared herself. Never in her life had she dived from a board higher than three metres.

Too bad.

A firm hand held her back, gripping her wrist.