Madame topped up their glasses, then stepped back, folded her arms and stood a short distance from them, like a sentry. ‘Please you will enjoy,’ she said. ‘Bon appétit.’

‘Merci!’ Roy said, followed by Cleo who politely said the same.

Roy ate a mouthful of the rich pâté. Then he checked his phone again. Still no signal. He looked at Kaitlynn. She shook her head, then glanced at her own phone. ‘I still don’t have a signal.’ She slipped away from the table to go and check on Noah. And, no doubt, Jack.

‘Papa, do you know how foie gras is made?’ Bruno said. ‘It’s gross! They force-feed a goose, making its liver swell until—’

‘Bruno!’ Cleo said firmly. ‘We really don’t need to know right now, OK?’

Roy stood up. ‘Right, what I’m going to do is drive back down towards the road, where we last had a signal, and try Jack from there.’

‘Roy, finish eating, at least,’ Cleo said.

‘Darling, he might be broken down somewhere and going nuts trying to contact us. I’ll be back in ten minutes, OK?’

He told Madame the foie gras was delicious and that he would be back to finish it. Then he left the dining room and hurried out through the front door into the porch. And stopped. A wall of rain was pelting down even harder than before. There was another brilliant flash of lightning and it was followed, almost instantly, by a massive crash of thunder. It was as if the sky above him had been torn apart.

The storm was right overhead. He remembered something his dad had taught him many years ago. If you could count five seconds between the flash and the thunder, the storm was one mile away. If the thunder followed the lightning instantly, it meant danger, it was right overhead.

Should he go back in and wait for it to move away? That would be the sensible thing. But poor Kaitlynn was desperate, and in truth he was now very concerned about Jack, too. He glanced warily at the sky, then ducking his head, he sprinted across to their Citroën. He gave the driver’s door a hard yank.

It was locked.

Shit. Bugger. He remembered he’d left the keys all the way up in his room. Great! Seventy-two very steep steps both ways and no sodding lift.