‘Not miss. You can address me as Maître. Maître Baron, lawyer, IENA and Associates, Vernon.’

The boys looked at each other again. Aghast.

‘Let’s get out of here!’

They vanished.

Again Orsu didn’t return her smile. Never mind. Clotilde turned back to the mirror, proud of having put the wind up the little fools. She studied the bearded giant out of the corner of her right eye, the one already underlined in black. Orsu stood there for a moment, not moving, then plunged the mop back into his bucket and immediately took out another clean one.

Clotilde’s black-lined eye froze, as if trapped; she was seized by a violent feeling of vertigo, and held on to the wall of the shower block with both hands, dropping her eye-liner into the sink.

She tried to steady her breathing, to calm herself, to rewind the scene she had just witnessed, watching Orsu’s trivial gesture in slow motion. Throwing a dirty mop in the bucket and taking out a different, clean one.

Impossible, impossible, impossible.

The black drip from the eye-liner slid slowly towards the plug-hole, like a snake returning to its lair.

A trivial gesture.

Orsu had already turned his back on her and was using a stiff-bristled brush to erase the traces of the young idiots’ footsteps.

An unreal gesture … from the other side.

She was going mad.

~

‘You look lovely, Valentine …’

Cervone Spinello was standing by reception at the Euproctes campsite, holding his mobile phone, greeting people as they went in and out like a laid-back monitor watching kids coming and going from school. His wife, behind the counter, was talking in perfect English to some Scandinavian tourists who had set rucksacks twice as heavy and bulky as themselves by the counter. Anika was tall, smiling, elegant; refined, attentive and very busy. She was both the heart and the lungs of the Euproctes campsite, its supplementary soul, its patron saint. Cervone was only the priest.

Valentine stopped and turned towards the manager of the campsite.

‘Thank you.’

She pointed to her hair, which was held back by a modest headscarf, and the long skirt that fell to her ankles, then murmured confidentially:

‘I’m on duty. In two hours’ time we’re having dinner with the grandparents.’

‘Cassanu and Lisabetta? At Arcanu Farm?’

Valentine nodded with a mocking smile, and brought her hand to her hair to push a rebellious tendril back under the salmon-coloured cloth. She stared at the poster displaying the plans for the Roc e Mare marina.

‘According to Maman, we’re to avoid talking about your palace in front of Papé.’