In a moment of depression, he imagined them taking advantage of his absence to try and redefine the terms of their contract. It had only been two days, but already he felt he could see more clearly. After more than twenty-five years in the film industry, he was no fool, and he suspected that, in addition to his company and equipment, it was his feature film experience that Liem and Travis were interested in, as well as his record of achievements and, of course, his much-vaunted library. Forty-eight films to date. A collection of films he owned the rights to, about ten of which were hugely popular, representing the fruits of a quarter of a century’s work. A library for a producer is like treasure, it acts as life insurance, especially when some films are regularly shown on TV and across the world. He had two Chabrol and one Resnais, one Jarmusch and two Giannoli in his library, as well as a good twenty others he was proud of and which had been successes. He didn’t want to share his treasure, much less give it up. He still wanted to own it, even if he needed the money. Perhaps Liem and Travis were parading about with it, claiming to be co-owners to lure in the people at Netflix; they were of course obsessed with having ‘content’, and ‘creating content’ was all they could talk about. Liem and Travis knew very well that, like Amazon, Netflix needed content to fill their schedules, and unlike Franck, who was wary of the tech giants, his partners wanted to get closer to them. They even planned to offer them shares and get them to invest, which would be like inviting the fox into the henhouse thinking it was an ally. At no point did they consider that when you make a deal with someone much bigger than you, you risk getting eaten.

It all became clear to Franck when he went into the café. He again went to sit right at the back; the other customers were on the terrace, where there were no more free tables. He opened his laptop, which connected automatically to the Wi-Fi this time, and immediately spotted the emails from Liem and Travis in his inbox with the little red flag for urgent. They both had the subject: ‘Amendments to contract’. At least it was clear. It wasn’t even worth reading the emails; Franck already knew what was in them. He ordered a double espresso and resolved not to forget to buy coffee and some five-litre bottles of water at the organic shop, because Madame Dauclercq was probably right about the tap water and Lise didn’t feel comfortable drinking it, not even after boiling it.