They had been inseparable for much of their adult lives – in their professional lives too. It is quite something to think that for twenty-five years your life has been bound up with the person you live with, to the point that you are almost fused together. Lise had been filming a lot when they first met, getting one role after another and often travelling to the USA. She had even helped him produce his first feature film out of her own pocket. Franck had only produced short films before meeting Lise, small things that won awards at festivals but made no money. His first two feature films were flops, and again Lise had saved his skin and stopped him from going broke. Maybe that’s what being a couple means: needing someone absolutely and relying on them, knowing that depending on the circumstances, one of the couple will need to be doing well when the other isn’t, otherwise the relationship would not be balanced.

She knew better than anyone what an ordeal it was to produce a film; she had a huge amount of respect for the work producers did, having to put on a show of strength and reassure others while deep down they were terrified of losing everything. Without her, Franck might not have succeeded in building the career he now had. Had they not met, he might still have been producing short films or adverts, or maybe he would have opened the restaurant he had talked about at the time, the kind of back-up plan you cling to when things aren’t going well. Over the years, Lise and Franck’s roles had balanced each other. For ten years they had both succeeded in their own careers. They had never worked together but they had always loved and supported one another, until Lise could no longer find roles at her level, and then she lost the desire to act. Acting is a profession that leaves little room for you to be yourself, and once she had reached forty, Lise had no longer wanted to be somebody else, to play a character more or like her, to appear in front of a camera that captured the slightest wrinkle or lack of sparkle. She could no longer stand the feeling of having that eye focused on her, observing everything. Because screen acting always comes back to lying about your age: you play thirty-year-olds at forty, forty-year-olds at fifty, and you lie more and more desperately. Having played one character after another, she no longer knew who she really was, or what she liked, or what kind of life she wanted. What she was really searching for was authenticity, calm and peace. That’s why Lise felt completely at home here before she had even seen the whole house or explored its surroundings. At least here she had everything she wanted, for three weeks minimum.