Every year, on 23 August, for as long as I can remember, Papa and Maman have given themselves a break and have spent the evening at the Casa di Stella, the best restaurant between Calvi and Porto, with a romantic terrace set under olive trees, a charcoal grill, braised Corsican veal, grilled fillet of grouper, free-flowing Casanova muscat. You can get there on foot via a steep path above Arcanu Farm. They sleep there, in the gîte, I assume they book a double room, with a roughly carved wooden bed, a marble basin on the table, an old-style bath in the middle of the room, and a huge bay window that gives you a view of the Great Bear. At least that’s how I imagine it. To tell you the truth, I think I’d love a lover of mine to take me up there, to the Casa di Stella, the house of stars … Please let that happen, tell me that will happen to me one day?

End of parenthesis.

My parents’ marital bliss on the balcony overlooking the Milky Way, that was before.

This year, KA-BOOM.

It started with the posters that were stuck all over the campsite and along the road. A concert of Corsican polyphonic music. 23 August, at 9 p.m. The group is called A Filetta, apparently they’re very well known. They tour all over the world, and here they were, performing close by, at the chapel of Santa Lucia, in an almost abandoned village – Prezzuna, above Galéria.

Papa’s approach was rather heavy-handed.

Uno: I slow down as we pass the posters.

Deuzio: I tell you they’re the best group on the planet, and play their cassettes on a loop.

Tertio: I hint, I outline, I suggest in passing to Mama Palma that we could celebrate our anniversary on a different day, the day before Saint Rose’s day, or the day after. Saint Fabrice or Saint Bartholomew’s day.

As I said, Ka-BOOM.

Mama Palma didn’t even say no, she just said, ‘If you want.’

The worst possible answer! Since then you should see her face. She’s like the rose in the jar in The Little Prince. Straight, proud, annoyed. All thorns sticking out.

My mother is a terribly proud flower.

So ever since that moment, we’ve been in a state of great suspense. Broadly speaking, I see can two options.

The first is that Mama Palma will make Papa feel guilty enough to give up his concert. I’d never tell him, even under torture, but I’m actually on Maman’s side on this one. Female solidarity carries its obligations.

The second option: Papa doesn’t give in and we find ourselves in a cold war, at least until we get to the ferry, and maybe even after that.