‘Where’s Valou?’ Franck immediately reproached himself for not asking any other question, even for form’s sake: how was your evening? how was that Italian girl? how was the seaside disco?

But Clo was on her own.

She looked exhausted. Her eyes were drawn, her gait weary. As if she were ready to collapse without saying a word, without explaining anything. Tomorrow, tomorrow, I’m shattered. Franck didn’t like this attitude, this carelessness, bordering on contempt. He hated feeling as if he were being left out and yet still had to justify himself.

‘Where’s Valou?’ he said again.

Clotilde slumped on to a chair. He was annoying her, he could tell.

His wife’s words came out slowly, dragging their feet.

‘She stayed on. With friends. Some girls from the campsite. They’ll come back up together.’

‘Are you fucking serious?’

His words came out just like that, unplanned, at a sprint. And there was a whole team just behind them.

‘She’s fifteen, damn it! Are you oblivious to that, or what?’

A team of executioners.

He machine-gunned her with his eyes.

‘I’ll go. I’ll go and find her.’

Clotilde didn’t react and Franck plunged off into the darkness.

~

When Franck came back, Clotilde was asleep.

At least she was lying under the blankets, wearing her Charlie and the Chocolate Factory T-shirt.

Eyes closed.

She had left the window open, and Franck didn’t dare close it. He undressed quickly, in the semi-darkness, and pressed his body against his wife’s.

‘It’s fine, Valou has gone to bed.’

Lips pressed tight together.

Franck rested his head on Clo’s shoulder, slipped a hand underneath her and gripped her left breast.

Heart closed.

He felt her breath against his palm, the echo of techno through the open window giving him the illusion that he could hear its beat, amplified a million times.

‘I’m sorry, Clo. I’m sorry for speaking to you like that. I was just concerned about Valentine. There are drunk guys down there. Weed. The beach, the sea, the rocks.’

The heart calmed down slowly as the music speeded up.

Lips parted, at last.

‘What did she say?’

‘Valou? Nothing. She was surprised to have been allowed to stay up so late, I think.’

Boom boom boom boom.

Outside.

Eyes wide open now.

Clotilde turned over gently and gazed into his eyes.

‘You were just worried, it’s fine. Let’s leave it at that. You’re … you’re an amazing father.’

Franck’s hands ventured under the T-shirt again, and the more daring of the two touched her other breast.

‘And a useless husband?’

She let him stroke her, gently fill her heart with desire, her mouth with sighs, her belly with pleasure, before the seams burst one by one and she murmured, ‘Shut up, you silly fool!’