Sometimes she infuriated him. Though he envied her simplicity and her natural inclination always to look on the bright side, at times she appalled him, since he was so unlike that.

‘Have you seen? I found a dog.’

The dog must have known they were talking about it; it looked Franck right in the eye, as if everything was suddenly getting serious. It didn’t move. Franck could sense the animal was expecting something from him. It seemed to be awaiting an order or instruction; to find out if it could carry on playing or if it had to start pursuing new prey, like last night. Franck gave an order, as if he were the dog’s master.

‘Fetch … Go and fetch the animal!’

The dog stood attentive but totally confused. It started to bark roughly while staring at Franck, as if it was asking him to say something else, to be more precise.

‘Franck, what are you doing? Leave the dog alone.’

‘No, Lise, you can see it expects something from me.’

‘Come on, what are you talking about? Let’s go back up, I’m thirsty. And hungry. You got the water?’

‘Damn. I got everything apart from the water …’

Lise had started to go back up towards the house, with new purpose in her step.

‘Well, if the dog’s waiting for you to give it an order, tell it to go and fetch some water.’

‘Wait, Lise! I have to tell you about what happened last night.’

Lise answered him without turning around: ‘What are you going to tell me now? That you’ve seen wolves? Bears? Apparently there are lynxes around here – I read it on the internet but I didn’t tell you because you’d have made such a big deal of it.’

Franck caught up with her.

‘Well, maybe it’s that, Lise, lynxes … Maybe that’s what it was last night. There were strange noises down there – you’ve no idea. They were incredible; it was awful.’

‘You know, you should have been a scriptwriter, not a producer.’

‘No, Lise, wait, stop. I swear there were animals down there last night, loads of animals making extraordinary noises; it gave me the creeps, believe me, and without thinking I told the dog to “Go fetch”, and it did. It ran after those animals and it must have been chasing them until dawn. I heard it howling far away, barking from the other side of the hills, and then afterwards, nothing.’

‘Oh right, because it was already here last night?’

‘Yes, it kept me company.’

‘You’re talking about it like it’s a human being!’

‘No, it’s just that in the pitch dark, it was there.’

‘Well, look at you, the one who’d given up on making new friends!’