Lise looked at him as if he were drunk or mad, or had suddenly been struck by a strange illness, and was now delirious. Franck sat down opposite her.

‘Let me explain, Lise. The terms I’m getting them to sign mean I’ll be free, free to make the films I want to make, a feature film every two years, with a guaranteed minimum budget of five million … And you know what, I want to make a film here … Yes. Here. The story? No idea, but I like the landscape; I want to use it … I’m sure this house has plenty of stories, we just need to look for them … And the ruins down there, the village that was abandoned overnight, I can tell it’s full of stories, I can tell it’s a goldmine …’

Lise held her cup of tea in front of her face; she didn’t know what to say. She watched him get up and walk back to the house. He picked up his bag and walking boots from the doorway, put them on and pulled the laces tight. She could see him from where she was sitting. Then he walked over to the car and got some stapled sheets of paper out of the boot, holding up three A4 documents for her to see.

‘I left them the contracts to read yesterday, but I’ll take duplicates just in case; they probably got them all dirty last night. And I think it’s going to rain before evening …’

‘Oh, you can predict the weather now?’

‘You’ll see, Lise, you’ll see. I feel as if I can identify with nature.’

He was so determined that Lise didn’t want to disagree. She had always been able to tell how strong someone else’s resolution was. And yet, when he came over to kiss her before he left, she couldn’t help speaking her mind.

‘Still, it’s quite something to leave two boys outside for a whole night. You know, you’re in danger of having—’

‘Having what?’

‘Well, I don’t know, kidnapped them?’

‘But, Lise, you saw what they wanted me to do! They wanted to bring me down!’

‘Human beings speak to one another; we talk things over.’

‘But they’re not human beings, they’re jackals; they’re behaving like jackals, finding an injured animal and taking advantage of it, stealing my library so it’ll be easier to get rid of me afterwards, taking twenty-five years of work away from me. All this just to get those bastards from Netflix! Can’t you see, if we let them push us around, they’ll use their millions to squeeze everyone else out. We had to face tycoons in the past, fat, sweaty American producers, but this is a thousand times worse. These are huge corporations attacking us. These digital giants are monsters, they’re got no limits, and to top it off, they don’t pay taxes.’