It was Aurélia who told me what happened next. Aurélia is the daughter of Cesareu Garcia, an officer at Calvi police station. Between ourselves, I wouldn’t say that I liked Aurélia all that much. She’s two years older than me and she thinks a great deal of herself, with her big, serious ideas along the lines of ‘that’s the law and that’s how it is and if it isn’t I’m telling my dad’. It’s as if she’s never been a child, as if she threw a double six in life’s game of Ludo, and managed to skip the first few squares. I feel sorry for her future husband, if she ever manages to find one. It’s hardly a foregone conclusion for Aurélia – the boys look at her even less than they look at me, and that’s saying something. Even Nicolas, yet I’m willing to bet the poor thing would give it up for my big brother. It’s not that she’s ugly exactly, she has big round eyes, black as olives, and big eyebrows that almost meet above her nose, making her look even more severe. It’s just that she’s boring. The opposite of me, if you like: I act too young and she acts too old. That’s why there’s a kind of solidarity between the two of us, or no, it’s more like a competition, I would say. Two different ways of adapting to the situation. Maybe we’ll meet up in a few years and see who’s won.

But anyway, on the morning of the big BOOM, Aurélia said to me, in that haughty, pinched voice of hers:

‘My father’s gone to see your grandfather, Cassanu. Everyone knows he’s the one who blew up the marina.’

‘?????????’

‘But no one’s going to say anything, of course. Omertà. Omertà, my dad says. Everyone here has a debt to your grandfather. Basile, the manager of the campsite, first of all, they were at school together. Just think about it, someone plants a bomb, they know it’s him but no one says anything.’

It amused me to imagine her little father (or rather her big father, because you should see Cesareu, he’s the weight of a Corsican bull) climbing into his little police van to go and talk to my Papé, sweating, his knees trembling, like a little mouse going to negotiate over a corner of the barn with the house cat.

I put her in her place.

‘There’s no proof against my Papé. Your father must have told you that.’

‘Yes, he did.’

I pressed home the point.