Liem lifted his leg to show Franck the blue Meindls he was so proud of. He was always boasting about the trek he had done when he was twenty. Not exactly a round-the-world trip, he had walked from Paris to the Urals, having originally planned to make it to Beijing. It was something he was quite proud of, but his complacence was always slightly tempered by a note of defeat. Franck knew Liem was the weaker of the two and would probably be the first to crack. Travis, though he had never attempted any kind of major expedition, was probably in very good shape because he ran every day and had been boxing since childhood, and he had one of those cocky, unflinching gazes.

They started out on the main road that was known as the ‘old road to Paris’. From there, Franck turned off to the left onto a much smaller B-road. He hadn’t had any trouble finding the signs for Souillac when he was driving to the station earlier, but now he was relying on his instincts, using the sun and aiming for the south. There weren’t many signs apart from the small blue ones for local places, where there usually weren’t even any houses. He was going quite fast, but the Audi was so smooth that it felt as if they were flying over the potholes and verges. Franck was driving as if he knew the route perfectly, when in fact he was just waiting for the sign for Limogne. Once he got there, he would know how to get back to Mont d’Orcières. He refused to use the GPS because there was no fun in that, and he didn’t want Liem and Travis to work out where they were or find out the exact address, especially as there wasn’t one. He didn’t want them just to feel lost, he wanted them to be lost.

‘Listen, I’ll level with you. Do you know why I asked you to come?’

‘To sign!’

‘Yes, but not just for that.’

‘I don’t know – do you want us to do a team-building thing, a hike through the forest to bring everyone together, is that it?’

‘No, I asked you to come because I didn’t want to go back to Paris. I’ve already agreed to your terms; I wasn’t going to come running to you like a good doggie.’

‘But, Franck, the terms work for all of us! Trust us, we’re doing it for the company; we’ve got to be the first ones in France to team up with Netflix; we’ll pull the rug out from under everyone else.’

‘We’re not going through this again now. But it’s fine; don’t worry, I’ll sign.’