When she emerged again, she didn’t look back and was careful to move with the same relaxed gait and rhythm. She walked on through a covered market, stopping to buy some pastries, and finally got back to find her husband and children still at the table in the little square, lingering over the dregs of their coffee.

‘Success?’ Stuart asked, noticing that his wife was carrying little in the way of groceries.

‘Yes. We need to go.’

‘Take a seat. I’ll order you a café au lait.’

‘We need to go now. Don’t make a fuss. Don’t argue. Don’t look surprised or shocked. Just get up, go in and pay, and then we’ll leave.’

They looked at her, dumbfounded. ‘What’s going on?’ Stuart asked.

She gave him a broad smile, swinging her back towards the cathedral, so that there was no chance any of her watchers could read her lips. ‘Just do as I say, Stuart. And please don’t ask any more questions.’

All three looked like they wanted to argue with her, to fight against this intrusion of the past into their fragile idyll, but they knew better than to try. Fiona and Gus stood at either side of their mother as they waited for their father to pay.

‘It’s getting hot,’ Kate said. Neither answered. ‘Even I might have a swim later,’ she added.

Stuart returned. ‘Most expensive coffee in history,’ he said easily. ‘Almost as bad as bloody Venice.’

Kate smiled at him and they turned down the cobbled street in the direction of the quay and the river.

And now she spotted a third shadow: she’d seen the young woman with a nose piercing and Crocs by the fig stall at the market around the cathedral. Or was she imagining things?

Kate moved faster. She took Fiona and Gus’s hands and they held on to her willingly. ‘Come on,’ she said. She wanted to run and was starting to pull along both her children.

‘What is it?’ Stuart whispered again. ‘What’s spooked you?’

Kate shepherded them across the road, which ran alongside the Dordogne river, sparkling now in the midday sun. The quay doubled as a car park. ‘Get in,’ Kate said, as they reached their rented Renault Clio. She took the keys from Stuart.

‘You’re not insured,’ he said, but she ignored him. She slid in behind the wheel, pulled the driver’s seat forward, glanced in the rear-view and side mirrors.

The man in the olive T-shirt was forty or fifty yards behind her, but moving fast.

‘What the hell is going on?’ Fiona’s voice was shrill with fear.

Kate reversed steadily, ignoring her daughter. As she turned on to the road, she watched the man get into a black Volkswagen Golf, the girl with the pierced nose joining him. ‘Damn,’ she said.

‘What is it, Kate?’ Stuart asked, as she spun around the corner, accelerated to the top of the slope and swung right on to the narrow old bridge that led away from the town.