‘No, Lise, I just think that … you don’t know what it’s like, living in the countryside.’

His own feelings aside, he reflected that for Lise this would be a chance to test her intuitions about her health and the new daily regime she was putting herself through. She wanted a month away from absolutely everything that was bad for her. Spending such a long time fearing for your partner’s life takes a toll on a relationship. Even if at times you’re not sure you still love each other, even if you often have arguments and swear that it’s over, when one of you suddenly finds themselves waiting months for diagnoses and test results, then all that love that seemed to have faded is revived; all that love you’ve stopped showing each other comes back with renewed force. He had lost count of the number of times he had told himself during the six months of her treatment that if he lost Lise, he would lose everything. He didn’t make sense without her. He had enormous respect for the courage she had shown all through her illness, for the way she accepted the doctors’ appointments and treatments without doubting them, or without appearing to. He admired that in her – her ability to stay calm and relaxed. Since Lise had recovered, he had taken care of her. Without making it obvious, he looked after her, even though he knew that she was more resilient than he was. He understood how her cancer had affected her, her need to get close to nature, how furious she became each time she switched on her computer and discovered dozens of Wi-Fi connections available, how she disliked seeing everyone on their phones in the street, on the Métro or in cafés, because now she could physically feel the electromagnetic radiation. She felt irradiated by the waves from those millions of connections, phone calls and networks which were always there, passing through us, to say nothing of the hotspots and myriad communications on RER trains and in cafés. And on top of that were the warnings about pollution and air quality, the constant reminder that, in the city, even breathing was dangerous. She had grown to hate the scooters and the buses belching black fumes, the coaches which kept their engines running even when they were at a standstill, the lack of consideration that was at the root of everything. She worried about the ever-increasing traffic or the daily revelations about the pesticides everywhere or the endocrine disruptors found in green beans … At least, at the gîte, there would be no farming nearby, no fields, just limestone plateaus.