Franck was fascinated by the stall, just as he would have been fascinated by any shrine where the dead were glorified before being devoured. Although he wasn’t really vegetarian, for ten years he had only eaten meat when there was no other option. Lise had persuaded him long ago. He didn’t find it at all shocking that others ate meat, but faced with this mound of it, so exhilaratingly raw, so real and palpable, along with the red-handed butcher surrounded by his enormous knives, it disgusted him. It seemed like a trade from a bygone age. The barking of the dog from last night came back to him. Running after who knows what, on the other side of the hill it had howled for death – not as an abstract notion, but a death it was preparing to deliver by killing the prey it was pursuing. The beast must have spent the whole night running after creatures that were even more cruel than it was, and even hungrier. Franck was sure that the dog had rushed after these animals because of the little click of the tongue he had used to goad it on. To be honest it was he who had provoked the dog.

A stupid brass band passed through the middle of the market that was why he couldn’t go forwards or backwards. The butcher’s face was the same colour as those pieces of beef; there wasn’t the slightest difference. He thought he could see a red tinge to everyone around him, even the kids who were blowing their wind instruments in the terrible brass band. He suddenly felt as if he were paying a visit to another people, lost in a tribe of eager hunters where dogs were man’s ally and all other animals were just prey … Maybe the stray dog’s owner was here amongst all the people surrounding him. Unless it was truly wild.

Franck could feel the butcher still watching him even as he carved the meat. Maybe he was the owner of the house, the one who was replying to emails from a foreign address to avoid paying taxes. Maybe he had recognised him; maybe he knew exactly who he was. In a sudden fit of paranoia, Franck thought that Liem and Travis had perhaps plotted all of this, and Lise was in on it. He was stuck here in this godforsaken place, not realising that he had been the victim of a prank from the very start …

He was letting his imagination run away with him. Sensing that the situation was out of his control, he was telling himself that it had all been planned by others to throw him off course. But why would Lise want that, when she had always done everything to reassure him? Liem and Travis, on the other hand, in the full flush of their triumphant thirties, were capable of anything.