Félix and Inès jumped in, knees brought level with their faces, clasping their legs with their arms as they burst through the surface of the water. Clotilde observed them for a moment, then looked up to cast her eyes further away, towards Alga beach and the Revellata Peninsula. The pool looked out over the peninsula. Turiops, the dolphin sanctuary, had opened its doors almost fifteen years ago now. The main building, the reception area, the museum, the laboratories and the conference rooms had been built entirely in Corsican pine, according to Palma’s original plans. A minor masterpiece of integration with the natural environment, of energy self-sufficiency, using the wind and the sea, an educational success. Nothing remained of the ruins of the original Roc e Mare marina, apart from the Brando stones that had been used on the path and the stairs leading to the pool and on the observation deck for the dolphin pool.

‘Aren’t you coming swimming too, Mamy Clo?’

‘Leave your grandmother in peace!’ Valentine called out to her children before immersing herself once more in the columns of figures that marched up and down her tablet.

Clotilde hesitated. She still swam almost every day of the year, often with Cirdan and Eöl, the dolphins from the reserve, or Aranel, the porpoise they had saved from the fishermen’s nets in Centuri. And in the summer with Félix and Inès … At last she got up from her chair, deciding to make the most of the time she had left with her grandchildren. In two days’ time they would be returning with Valentine, to their apartment in the heart of Bercy-Village, with a direct view of Papa’s big office, and Clotilde would be left alone. At the end of August the crowds of tourists began to thin out, but the laughter of other children still echoed in the corridors of the sanctuary; from the start of September, Turiops was filled with groups from the schools of Corsica. It was her seventh ‘back to school’; Clotilde hadn’t left the island since she retired.

Her eyes wandered over to the universal clock that hung over the pool, the meter that measured the quality of the water, the built-in weather station, and paused on the wooden plaque, a tribute to the architect, that was placed below the high-tech equipment. Her mother’s name was framed by two wild roses, identical to the ones planted around the park, blooming in every shade of pink and mauve between April and July.