The hand of a giant, the kind you don’t resist. Sergeant Cesareu Garcia didn’t let go, didn’t speak, he merely gave her a look that said: no, that’s enough, enough people have died, one more sacrifice wouldn’t help anyone.

There were only three of them now, standing beside the broken barrier.

Cesareu, Aurélia and her.

‘Let go of me.’

She tried to pull away, but the sergeant didn’t budge. Clotilde felt a wave of hysteria welling up inside her, she had to act, she couldn’t let her daughter and her mother perish like this.

‘Listen,’ said Aurélia.

Listen to what?

The wind was blowing from the sea. Perhaps it would carry the sound of a fire engine’s siren coming towards the mountains? She listened intently but could hear nothing. Nothing but the wind blowing stronger and stronger, at least that was how it seemed to her, creating waves that were getting higher and higher, and ever more deadly.

She lowered her eyes.

Cassanu had managed to get hold of Valou’s shoulder, he was still clutching Palma, and they all pressed tight together, like bales fallen from a cargo-ship. Floating desperately, being dragged under, rising again, shaken, soaking, exhausted. With no other hope but to hold on, hold on, hold on.

Why? Until when? Who could reach out a hand to help them?

‘Listen,’ Aurélia repeated.

For years Clotilde would reproach herself. She never really got over the fact that Aurélia had recognised the sound before she did, even if she had almost never heard it. That engine noise.

In the moment, Clotilde merely poured all of her emotion into her voice, shouting as loud as she could:

‘There! There!’

She called out to Papé:

‘Hang on there! Please God, hang on, you’ll be rescued!’

A hundred metres away, behind the last rocky cape that concealed the rest of the Revellata Peninsula, the Cave of the Sea-Calves, the lighthouse, and Punta Rossa, a small boat had just appeared.

Bigger than a rowing-boat, smaller than a trawler.

The Aryon.

Engine down, splitting the waves, slaloming easily among the reefs that it seemed to know by heart. Natale, at the wheel, wore a red windcheater and his fair hair was whipping about in the wind.

Never had Clotilde’s heart beaten so hard.

Within a few moments, Natale had closed in on the three bodies floating in the water. He turned off the engine and leaned down to grab Valentine first.

It wasn’t easy, the powerful waves made the boat roll as soon as the engine was turned off; Valou, her arms trapped, was unable to help him. Only Cassanu was able to help, pushing the girl’s body up, while trying not to let go of Palma. Natale leaned so far over the railing it looked as if he might fall in.

At last he managed to haul Valentine into the bottom of the boat.