If she had been there, she would have told him to calm down. Only he couldn’t. Because of the image that kept coming back to him. Last night, the dog had been right there, the huge dog with the shining eyes, standing there alertly, just as he had been, while the terrible racket came from below, listening to the growls of the animals hiding in the half-light at the bottom of the valley. Even now at midday, the valley floor was in shadow, turning the land into folds of dark, humid terrain, from which the hill opposite rose. Its dense, wooded slope went up to the crest in front of him with the hill rolling down on the other side to an area of shadow like this one, a valley at the foot of which another hill rose up, and so on until you reached the Massif Central, and then the Urals. In this landscape, every wooded hill was surrounded by a mysterious gully of shadows, a dip in the land that the sun didn’t reach. The noises had found their way out of that dark, damp ravine last night, and now Lise appeared from those very shadows. She emerged from the undergrowth forgotten by the sun, walking calmly, slowly, straight ahead. He couldn’t believe it and nearly panicked, fearing that she had been regurgitated by some predator. But she was strolling serenely, with her big hat and a foam mat under her arm, as if she were leaving a yoga or meditation session. He was so pleased to see the beloved figure, so calm and free as always, as opposed to him who was soaked in sweat. He loved Lise for her grace, for the elegance of her every movement. Now when she walked through the tall valley grass, rather than dragging her feet, she lifted her knees high, appearing slender and almost weightless. The sight of her took him back to the day they met in real life, for before he had only ever seen her on-screen. In some ways, she was still the same as she’d been that day, whilst he felt he had changed a lot, weighed down in all sorts of ways.