Few guests, but all wealthy.

In the sky against the clear outline of the Alps, it is possible to make out the distant shapes of two paragliders. A pair of elderly gentlemen have dozed off in their motorised wheelchairs. Their Asian carers are as discreet and quiet as mice.

A man in his fifties is doing gymnastics along with his decrepit father.

At the bottom of the garden, separated from the rest by a hedge, the obese South American, resting on his stick, is signing autographs for a mixed group of people, all of them enchanted by the sight of this sporting legend. At his side, his companion – ever worried about her man – keeps time on the signing. Someone takes a photo on their smartphone. She explodes and stops anyone else who dares to take a photograph.

From a sunbed, dressed in a white dressing gown, Fred Ballinger sucks on a sweet and watches with resigned interest as the autographs are ritually doled out by the South American. With the one hand that dangles free from the sunbed, he smoothes the sweet paper at irregular intervals, giving life to an accomplished rhythm.

Jimmy Tree is on the sunbed beside him and he too is closely observing the South American, but Jimmy’s attention is focused principally on the man’s briarwood walking stick with its twisted nodular shape and antique finish.

Jimmy then looks around and something else catches his eye: a mother spreading suntan lotion on her thirteen-year-old daughter.

This young girl, whose skin is so white it is almost transparent, stares at the ground as if about to faint from pathological shyness. Then, for no apparent reason – she must have become nervous – she starts gnawing at her fingernails with extraordinary voracity. Then the mother must have told her to stop, because the girl screams at her, gets up and hurries away.

With an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips, Jimmy cannot help but watch this scene in the same way an entomologist studies insects.

Supported by the stick and his wife, the South American is coming back up the garden. They walk past an empty tennis court, and the man’s attention is caught by a forgotten tennis ball lying on the ground.

*

Fred and Mick are next to each other at the chemist’s counter.

Fred waits while Mick, his glasses perched on the end of his nose, carries out a thorough check to see if the chemist is doing everything correctly.

In fact the man in the white coat is organising the numerous boxes of medicine in front of Mick into a sizeable mountain of pharmaceuticals

“That’s everything.”

“Good.” Mick turns to Fred and only now realises his friend has bought nothing for himself. Puzzled, he asks him, “Don’t you have to take anything?”

So Fred, feigning uncertainty, looks about him and his eyes fall randomly on the first shelf in front of him. It holds various types of plaster.

Fred takes the first box that meets his eye and places it in front of the chemist.