Orsu was using this technique like the hundreds of thousands of other men and women in the world who did the housework and also knew the same trick. She had to be careful not to lose her head, not to be sucked in by ludicrous coincidences. She had to control herself, leave as little room as possible for emotion, as she did when she had to conduct an investigation into a case that moved her, securing alimony for a woman who had been left alone with her children, persuading the husband to sell the house that he had built with his own busy little hands in order to divide the sum into two decent households, and then negotiating joint custody.

She had to concentrate.

That evening, over dinner with her grandparents at Arcanu Farm. She had to suppress her emotions and ask the right questions.

Tomorrow, when she met Cesareu Garcia. Clotilde had spoken to the retired policeman on the phone a few hours ago, but he had refused to say anything more. ‘Tomorrow, Clotilde, tomorrow. Not over the phone. Come here tomorrow, whenever you like. My house is in Calenzana. I’m not going anywhere. I never go anywhere.’

Orsu limped out of the shower block with his bucket and mop. Clotilde still couldn’t calm herself down, try as she might. Apart from the alarming coincidence of those two mops (the incident would have made all her friends explode with laughter, she told herself in an attempt to play it down), she still felt the insults that the boys had hurled at Orsu as if they were dagger-blows. The mere fact that they had called him Hagrid made her see red. Perhaps it was just down to his disability, the fact that Cervone was exploiting him, here in this setting, on this island, among these people that she had once idolised.

Clotilde looked at her watch.

They were expected at the farm in less than an hour.

Someone was waiting there for her. Someone who hoped to recognise her.

Pulling a face in the mirror which she hoped was that of a sulky and slightly rebellious teenager, she ran through the lines of the message in her mind. Like a prayer. Like instructions that you would give to a spy, something she had to learn by heart because it was a matter of life and death.

I ask nothing else of you. Nothing at all.

Or perhaps just that you raise your eyes to the sky and look at Betelgeuse. If you only knew, my Clo, how many nights I have looked at it and thought of you.

The timer switch in the shower block had just gone out, plunging the room into a faint gloom.

My whole life is a dark room.

Franck appeared in the doorway.

‘Shall we go, Clo?’

Kisses,

P.

13

Monday, 14 August 1989, eighth day of the holidays
Pinky-blue sky

It’s me!

You remember, I dumped you with my teenagers, dancing to the lambada.