‘Nothing really. But I’m not sure you can approach dolphins with a skull on your T-shirt.’

‘What would you prefer? A day-glo T-shirt? A pink cloud? Gilded angels?’

‘Because you’ve got all that under your T-shirt? Are you really hiding all those colours?’

The bastard! He’s unmasked me with just a few words. Like a little girl who says she hasn’t had a snack, but still has Nutella on her lips.

I’m preparing my answer when the boat starts rocking.

‘She isn’t annoying you?’

I don’t believe it!

It’s my mother. Without any embarrassment at all, she’s boarded the boat and forced her way into the conversation.

And from that moment everything changes.

He changes first.

It’s as if there were nobody on the boat but my mother, Mama Palma, with her frightened-fawn eyes resting on a life-raft, getting her heels caught in the net, crushing her dress against a lobster pot, squeaking like a terrified mouse.

As if he has forgotten me already.

Or even worse than that.

As if he only invited me on board in order to lure my mother on to his little boat. I saw the great big hook he dangled in front of me, but I hadn’t understood a thing. I’m not the fish, I’m only the bait!

A worm!

A worm to attract my mother.

‘Now don’t go telling her fairy-tales about your dolphins,’ Mama Palma simpers, looking down at the Big Blue poster. Her rebellious air conceals a marshmallow heart.

A marshmallow! That’s all my mother has to stick on her own hook.

I hate her!

‘I’m not joking, Madame Idrissi,’ the dreamy fisherman replies. ‘As strange as it might seem, dolphins are my real business. A pair and their calves have settled off the coast of La Revellata. They trust me. I really can take your daughter to see them if she’d like.’

My mother has sat down. Bare legs, squeezed tight together. I can see that she’s trying to cross swords with the laser eyes of this star-gazer.

‘You’d have to ask her.’

She crosses her legs.

I fold my arms, sulkily. Idiot. Jerk.

There’s a moment of silence.

‘Another time, perhaps!’ she says, getting to her feet. ‘Shall we go, darling?’

And we go.

He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t need to.

He holds his hand out to my mother to help her back on to the jetty. He rests his other hand on Maman’s waist, and she leans against the bare, tanned shoulder of her brave knight. To finish the dance, Maman leaps across the gap between the boat and the jetty, her skirt flying, her legs doing the splits. Like an improvised move that they had secretly practised.

‘If Clotilde changes her mind, can I get in touch with you?’

‘Of course, Madame Idrissi.’