The driver of the ambulance had spat out the stub of his cigarette. A stretcher-bearer came forward. The police Zodiac was moving in ever-increasing circles, taking the search further out to sea.

Clotilde’s heart felt veiled.

What else could she do? Abandon her daughter?

She turned around.

Valou and Palma were sitting side by side, the same golden blanket over their thighs, the same white towel wrapped around their hair, the same bent position. They looked startlingly similar.

‘Yes, Valou?’

‘Maman, I … I’ve got something for you.’

Valentine got to her feet, staggering slightly, then took out a plastic bag that had been wedged between her legs under the blanket. She hesitated for a moment, then leaned towards her grandmother.

‘No … you should give it to her.’

Palma’s voice trembled, she was struggling to articulate even a few syllables.

‘Please … call … me … Mamy …’

She found the strength to smile, to hold on her knees that mysterious plastic bag, without letting go of her granddaughter’s hands.

Clotilde walked over to them.

Their six hands mingled, holding the parcel together, making the plastic crinkle. Palma forced herself to speak again.

‘It’s … for … you …’

Palma and Valou opened their hands. They were crying, both of them.

Clotilde unwrapped her present gently, not understanding at first what could have provoked such strong emotions. At first she glimpsed something blue, faded blue through the plastic; then she felt a shape, rectangular, a book, no, not a book, more like a notebook, judging by its thickness.

The plastic bag flew off towards La Revellata and it didn’t occur to anyone to catch it.

Holiday diary. Summer ’89.

The writing, on the cover of her teenage diary, was still legible.

She opened it extremely carefully, like an explorer unfolding sheets of papyrus found in a Pharaoh’s tomb.

Monday, 7 August 1989, the first day of the holidays

Sky summer-blue.

Hi, I’m Clotilde.

I’m introducing myself just to be polite, even if you can’t be polite back because I don’t know who you are, whoever it is reading this.

That will be in a few years’ time, if I manage to hang on. Everything I write is Top Secret. Totally embargoed. Whoever you are, you’ve been warned! Besides, O my reader, in spite of all my precautions, I don’t know who you might be?

My lover, the one I have chosen for the rest of my life, the one to whom – quivering on the morning after my first time – I will entrust the diary of my teenage years?

Some idiot who has just found it, because being the total disaster I am, that was bound to happen?