Perhaps someone had taught it not to go into houses, or perhaps instinctively it didn’t feel it should. Franck didn’t know. Several times, he patted his thigh and held out a piece of bread to entice it inside, but each time, the dog made a strange movement with its the head, pricked up its ears and whimpered, but didn’t move. It hadn’t moved since it arrived, even though it was right in the sun. Had it shifted towards the shade on the right, it wouldn’t have been able to see what was going on inside the house. At times you could hear the snap of its jaw as it gobbled up one of the wasps buzzing around it. It was a harsh, deep noise, made up of the sound of teeth coming together and the clicking of its thick tongue. Franck couldn’t tell if it was really catching the wasps and swallowing them. But he noticed that the dog pricked up its ears every time he raised the knife to slice the tomatoes, mozzarella or bread. Franck even tried picking up the big knife and putting it down several times – the knife he had left outside the previous night – and the dog reacted differently depending on what he did. It paused and tensed when Franck picked the knife up, not moving and barely even panting, but when Franck put it down again, the dog relaxed and went back to its staccato breathing.

‘You’re hot. Come into the shade. Come here, come on …’

The dog cocked its ears, nothing more. Franck filled a big salad bowl with water from the tap and put it outside. The dog sniffed at the surface but didn’t drink it, looking at Franck again as if waiting for something, but it clearly wasn’t water.

‘What do you want, doggy, eh? And what’s your name, eh, and why don’t you have a collar?’

The dog stared at Franck with a disarmingly disappointed expression, as if it could understand his words but didn’t know how to respond.

Lise reappeared in a simple sarong, combing her wet hair.

‘So you speak to dogs now?’

‘No, I’m trying to work out what it expects from me …’

‘It must be disappointed.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘It’s just been watching you cut up tomatoes, vegetables, basil … It must be missing meat.’