‘I don’t know yet.’

‘Are we being followed?’

‘I think so.’ She glanced in the rear-view mirror at the Golf on their tail. ‘Yes, we are.’

‘Why?’ Fiona asked, fear in her voice.

‘Please, just give me a minute. I need to work out what’s going on here.’

Kate drove through the tiny hamlet across the bridge, then accelerated up towards the cemetery. She barely touched the brakes at the crossroads, prompting Fiona to squeal in terror, then hammered up the hill towards the vineyards that criss-crossed the slopes beneath the Grand Château of Monbazillac.

She was touching 120 kilometres an hour on the straight section of the narrow road and still at sixty or more in the tight chicane beneath the village, but the Golf stayed with her. As they passed the château, Gus turned to look back down the hill. ‘They’re still behind us, Mum!’

‘It’s all right,’ Stuart said calmly. ‘Your mother knows what she’s doing.’

Does she? Kate thought. It’s starting to feel like a really long time since I knew what I was doing.

She slowed to a crawl through the village, past the pretty church, the elaborate new mairie and what looked like a wine shop-cum-restaurant. Then she floored the pedal on the long, gentle slope beyond it.

Halfway down through the vineyards, the speedometer nudged 140. She hit the next set of tight turns a shade more slowly, but it was all she could do to keep the Clio on the road. Fiona screamed. Gus’s knuckles whitened as he clutched the grab handle just below the roof. Even Stuart’s face was draining of colour.

As she rounded the final corner, Kate yanked the wheel left. The Renault shot up a gravel track and flew off the crest. She hit the brakes as it landed and skidded to a halt beneath the cover of the trees.

The Renault’s dust cloud drifted away into the wood as they waited, Kate’s heart pounding.

They listened.

The Golf roared into sight on the road below them, slowed for the curves and accelerated again as it emerged from the stretch of woodland into the valley.

Kate finally exhaled.

‘Fucking hell,’ Fiona exclaimed. ‘You nearly killed us.’

‘Jesus, Mum,’ Gus said. ‘You are the man.’

‘Woman, I think you mean,’ Stuart corrected. ‘And, yes, your mum does know what she’s doing.’ He looked at Fiona. ‘Mind your language.’

Kate had closed her eyes. She would not, could not, go through all this again.

1

KATE KNEW SHE was in trouble from the expression of rapture on her children’s faces. No matter how often she had repeated on the plane to Bergerac that this trip did not imply any kind of formal rapprochement with their father, they were now listening spellbound to his endless reminiscences about happy times in their past.

‘You totally owned him!’ Gus said.

‘The look on his face!’ Fiona added.

The story in question concerned an argument in a ski lift in Les Arcs a few years previously, triggered by Gus’s irrepressible determination to jump the queue. Stuart had faced up to an aggrieved middle-aged Frenchman with such force that the man had immediately backed down. Kate hadn’t much cared for the incident in the first place, and the story didn’t improve with the telling. But she didn’t interrupt. The meal had already proved a minor miracle and she saw no good reason to burst its fragile bubble. Fiona had eaten everything put in front of her without being prompted. Gus was more garrulous than he’d been for some time. He’d taken the opposite route to his sister: his pallid cheeks were fleshy from too much comfort eating, the impression of teenage puppy fat accentuated by the terrible helmet haircuts he allowed his sister to inflict on him. But his face was currently transformed by laughter. So, too, was Fiona’s. For a moment, Kate could forget the stark angularity of her daughter’s cheeks that betrayed the seriousness of her growing mental disorder.