Lise wiped down the ancient table outside and they took out the chairs. There was no garden furniture apart from the table. A meadow of wild jagged grass stretched away for two hundred metres, ending in a row of trees and bushes on the edge of a sharp drop down into the valley, above the access road. The sun was going down on the other side of the faraway hills facing them. The track they had come from must be below, hidden by rocks and trees. The remains of the old village should be at the bottom of this hill, the village that Franck had read no longer existed. Only a few ruins were left.

They ate in the extraordinary silence. The birdsong gradually quietened down, merging into the evening calm. A woodpecker tapped away in the trees. There were no other sounds, save the buzzing of insects – late bees or weary flies. Lise already seemed at ease, to have become part of the scenery. Franck was disorientated, on the verge of panic, of leaving, of not being there, of taking refuge in the car, the huge great SUV that was clean and plush, without any insects … He wasn’t feeling good, but he said nothing. Lise could sense it. He knew she could sense it, but they didn’t talk about it. Biting into a crisp made a disproportionately loud noise in the silence, a crunch so loud that Franck feared you could hear it all the way down in the valley.

‘I think I could live here.’

Franck made no reply. In that sentence he might merely have heard a city dweller’s idealised notions of country living. But he could also hear the disenchantment of an actress who has abandoned all ambition, who has no desire to ever make another film.