The sun sank beyond the hill opposite, setting the woods ablaze with a colour that spread across the entire sky, a sky of velvety red. Lise freshened up in the shower. Then she turned on the old radio on the bathroom shelf. You could turn the knob through the entire FM dial but there was only one frequency, a station that played just music, with no adverts, news or talking. Lise turned the volume down to its lowest setting, thinking this would reassure Franck. When she went outside again, she came up behind him barefoot, and asked simply, ‘Feeling better?’ He jumped. It was dark now. A sliver of moon illuminated the mysterious outdoors. Inside, near the sink, Lise spotted a switch that must control the bulb outside, and luckily she was proved right. Franck inhaled. Seeing more clearly reassured him. Only, now that they were standing inside a pool of yellow light in which everything was visible, everything else was plunged into darkness and made even more disturbing, a sort of shadow that was infinite and completely impenetrable. Franck went upstairs to get the headlamp from his toiletry bag. He put it on and went back downstairs, the beam of light shining from his forehead.

‘Turn that off, Franck. Enjoy the silence, the fresh air. Breathe.’

Eventually their eyes adjusted and they could make out some shape. They could even see the row of trees on the cliff edge. Lise was sitting next to Franck, and he could not help turning his headlamp back on. The twenty-watt LED lamp cast a narrow beam that shone far into the distance; it swept the bottom of the valley, awakening thousands of white moths, some of which threw themselves into the lamp. With the beam pointing downwards, something came into view in the ravine. There was no need to confer; each knew the other had seen it. It had revealed itself to them both at once. On the edge of the woods, they could very clearly see two yellow glimmers, about two hundred metres away, two pupils that reflected the light, two narrow phosphorescent eyes, not too close to the ground. An animal was plainly standing there, watching them.

‘What’s that?’

Lise feigned a lack of interest, replying that it must be a deer, a doe, maybe even a fox or a cat; there were enough animals around here.

‘You have no idea what it is, do you?’

‘No, Franck, I don’t. But I think it’s pretty.’

There was a wide space between the two slanting pupils, giving the animal an intense look. The two fluorescent eyes seemed to be fixed on the house, unmoving, unblinking. Whether the beast was hostile or friendly, it was staring right at them.

‘Maybe it’s a wolf …’

‘Are you serious?’

‘I’m sure the woods are full of wild animals, I read it on the internet.’

‘Don’t talk nonsense, Lise.’