Clotilde had heard vague news about Maria-Chjara since August 1989. She had spotted her once, almost twenty years ago, in an Italian film on TF3; a cameo role, a girl riding a bicycle, skirt flying in the air, along the streets of Lucca. She had also seen her name and recognised her face when she had stayed in Venice with Franck, sixteen years ago, before Valou was born. An old four-euro CD in a bargain bin: flashy colours, songs she’d never heard of. So Maria-Chjara’s fame was probably relative, even in Italy.

‘You know, Valou, she was eighteen back then. She might be a bit … old-fashioned these days.’

But Valentine didn’t care. It was the pretext that mattered.

‘Don’t you want to see her again?’

Oscelluccia beach was just down the hill from the Euproctes campsite, and could be reached directly by a steep path bordering the sea. Clotilde studied the poster, the foam, the pool, the bikini with as much enthusiasm as if it were an advertisement for a bullfight.

‘Are you joking?’

‘I could go with you, Maman? I’d just go for the party but then you could see your friend.’

Sly little thing that she was.

Clotilde was going to say, ‘I’ll think about it, darling, we’ll see, first of all I need to get rid of these bags of fruit because they’re pulling both of my arms out of their sockets,’ when Franck suddenly appeared behind her. He took the shopping bags from Clotilde without a word, with no obvious effort, apparently without even thinking about it.

Gallant. Virile. The perfect man. What are you complaining about, you old thing?

‘What’s up, my lovely girls?’

Valentine explained about the party on the beach, the star of Revellata Peninsula, Maman’s childhood friend.

‘Do you want to go?’ Franck asked, turning towards Clotilde. ‘Would it be fun to see that girl again?’

Why not? Why not, in the end?

Franck rested his hands on his daughter’s shoulders.

‘There’s no way that you’re going to that beach party on your own. But if your mother goes with you …’

‘Thank you, Papa.’

The ungrateful hussy threw her arms around her father, the hero, without a word of thanks to the mother who was going to have to endure the eighties night, from the start of the evening to the demons of midnight. It had been an eternity since she had set foot in any nightclub.

Clotilde didn’t think about it for the rest of the day. From beach to bungalow, from deckchair to towel, her head immersed in the Mediterranean or under the shower, three questions ran through her mind in a loop. She gave herself until the evening to find three definitive answers.

Yes or no.