Strangely, amongst all the bubbles that rose up from the past it was the memory of her notebook abandoned on that bench that had taken the longest to burst. Who had picked it up? Who had opened it? She hardly remembered the words, the phrases, anything that she had written at the time; she just remembered her intentions, which were often mean, cynical, cruel. Before she met Natale, at least. If anyone had found that notebook, they would have thought she was the most awful bitch! She would have loved to read it again now. Her worst fear, that summer of ’89, was that her father or her mother would find it. That they would read it. At least she had escaped that embarrassment. Anyone could have violated her intimacy by diving into the lines of her private notebook, after the accident, after she went back to the mainland – anyone but her parents.

Cassanu and Lisabetta were waiting on the doorstep. Even though Clotilde hadn’t seen them for twenty-seven years, they didn’t seem much older than they were in her memories. She had always remained in regular contact with them; the odd postcard, a birth notice, some photographs, always accompanied by a few words. Nothing more than that. Her paternal grandparents had long ago stopped setting foot on the mainland, and it had taken Clotilde a long time before she had the courage to return to the site of the accident.

It was Lisabetta who kissed them, hugged them and held them tightly. Not Cassanu, who merely shook hands with Franck, first of all, and then greeted Clotilde and Valou.

It was Lisabetta who invited them in, told them to make themselves at home, who came out with an uninterrupted flood of words, not Cassanu, who already seemed weary of conversation.

It was Lisabetta who showed them around the farmhouse, a succession of rooms with the same drystone walls, and huge exposed beams, not Cassanu, who waited for them, sitting at the table under the pergola in the farmyard.

Other faded images hovered in the fog of Clotilde’s memory. The cupboards under the wooden staircase where she had played hide and seek with Nicolas every summer; a huge fireplace that she had never seen lit, but where she imagined they could have roasted a whole shark; the view over the sea from each window on every floor, and her mother calling to her not to lean out; the attic as high as a cathedral where they had taken refuge with cousins or local children, furnishing it with blankets, mattresses and sheets attached to the beams with drawing pins. A palace for ghosts, or a place for cuddles.