The scene struck Franck as surreal. Hidden away, five hundred metres up, three kilometres away from the nearest house, in the heart of Corsica, watching a soap opera set in Marseille …

Life was strange indeed.

Cassanu was an intelligent man, astonishingly quick, and still seemed to be physically active. The kind of man he himself got along with. And the kind of man he would like to remain, despite the passing years. Straight, determined, intransigent if necessary; good, solid hands to lead a family, a square face behind which strong convictions were stored in an orderly fashion, and a hard skull to stop him from changing them.

Franck wet his lips with the lemon-flavoured drink and studied Clotilde, who was standing fifty metres away, with Valou, under the holm oak.

‘I don’t know what she’s up to,’ he admitted to Cassanu.

His embarrassment sounded like an apology, but Cassanu seemed amused.

‘She’s going back to her childhood. Perhaps even further than that, to her roots. Clotilde has changed a lot since the last time I saw her.’

Franck thought of the surreal photos of his wife as a teenager. Her hedgehog hair. The way she dressed like an undertaker. He imagined the Goth rebel probably had some trouble blending in with the local environment back then.

‘I suppose.’

Cassanu raised his glass. Men together. As if this were some kind of initiation ritual into the Idrissi family.

‘What do you do for a living, Franck?’

‘I work in Evreux. A small town about an hour from Paris. I coordinate the parks department.’

‘Did you start out as a gardener?’

‘Yes. I slowly climbed my way up, like some kind of wisteria, ivy or mistletoe … That’s probably how my colleagues see me.’

Cassanu looked again at Clotilde and Valou. He seemed pensive, perhaps thinking of his son who had also studied agronomy before ending up selling turf.

‘You know why, about fifty years ago I called this campsite, the first one in the whole north-west of the island, Les Euproctes?’ the old Corsican went on.

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘It might interest you. The euprocte is a small salamander, a species endemic to the island. It lives near water, under rocks, and likes to find quiet places to sleep during the day. It’s now a protected species. Its presence is an indicator of the quality of the water, but not only that, it’s also a measure of the peacefulness of a place, the absence of noise, of movement, of intrusion, a kind of balance, if you like. There used to be hundreds of euproctes around Arcanu and the campsite, all the way over to Revellata Bay.’

‘And now?’

‘And now they’re leaving … same as everybody else.’

Franck hesitated, drank half his glass and then decided to test the old man a little.

‘Surely not everybody? I have a sense that new things are being built around here. The campsite, the Roc e Mare marina.’