Late Season

by Christobel Kent

Genres: Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

An isolated Tuscan farmhouse on the edge of an ancient wood is the perfect setting for a late September holiday. As a group of old friends from university and their families gather to relax and unwind, all are hoping it will be a chance to put the tragic events of the previous year behind them. There were six of them once; now they are are five.

Watching the British visitors arrive from her own terrace is Anna Viola, whose family has lived for centuries in the crumbling red-brick farmhouse above Il Vignacce. As a little girl during the war, Anna watched an Englishman arrive at the house, seeking shelter from the Germans. His appearance would change her life for ever; it still haunts the family home she holds in trust for her beloved son Paolo.

Release date: June 7, 2018

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 416

Sample

Anna saw the cars arrive from her terrace in the dusk, and watched as they disappeared down the lane and into the trees, where it was already quite dark. There were two estate cars with English plates and a little airport hire car trying to keep up with Montale’s pick-up as it careered ahead of them on the dirt road, kicking up clouds of white dust and scattering the loose stone of the road surface beneath its fat tyres. As she watched them disappear Anna wondered whether they knew what they were in for.

The dust hung in the darkening air for a while before settling, the roar of the cars receded down the valley into the woods, and Anna sat down again on the terrace to catch the last of the evening sun. The vine that hung in tendrils from her pergola was turning red and the few sharp black grapes it produced were almost ready for picking; summer was over and the sharp breath of winter not far away. At this time of year the temperature dropped fast as evening fell and it seemed to Anna more important than ever to catch the lingering warmth of the sun slanting low through the leaves. Montale’s pick-up came back up the lane alone just as Anna stood to go inside, glass in hand, her old red cushion and her book under her arm, and he raised a hand in greeting, squinting at her in the fading light. Anna nodded, smiling faintly at the red-haired farmer she had known since he was a boy, and turned to go inside.

 

Anna Viola’s small farmhouse stood just on the edge of the natural reserve of the Alto Merse, a series of densely wooded valleys in southern Tuscany through which the dark, peaty waters of the river Merse wound. The outside was built partly of stone, partly of the crumbling red brick common in and around Siena, although now only the vestiges of faded pink stucco still clung on here and there to the friable surface. The farmhouse was set into the lip of the hill, which sloped up a few hundred yards behind; an area overgrown now with brambles, birch and wild plum, dark and cool even in the summer. But at the front the stone façade faced southwest, and in the evenings the little terrace, which was set off to one side, would flood with the pale yellow light of the sun as it dipped. It was not always sunny, naturally, and in the winter, still a month or so off, the sun would have set by four, slipping down behind the range of black hills to the west. Then the house would turn cold very quickly, and it would seem a lonely place, perched as it was above hundreds of hectares of dark and almost uninhabited forest, on the edge of the wilderness.

In the next valley, down six miles or so of strada sterrata, or unmade road, it appeared that the foreigners Anna had glimpsed from her terrace had arrived at their destination. A modest stone farmstead in a clearing of scrubby pasture on the valley floor, Il Vignacce had, until a year or two earlier when Piero Montale had inherited it from his aunt, been nothing more than a ruin, commented on once or twice a year by passing walkers as picturesque in a desolate sort of way. The walls had been built of limestone and tufa, the pitted volcanic rock of the region, and had been a foot or more thick, but the window openings had stood empty for decades and the chimney stacks, one at either end, had long since collapsed.

But Piero Montale was a tirelessly industrious man, always out on his tractor, hauling water, ploughing, sowing, working away at every corner of his land. Hating the idea that such a resource as Il Vignacce might moulder away unused, he had determined that the ruin would make him some money and doggedly he had set about investigating what grants might be available for the restoration of the property. There were funds to be had for the reinvigoration of the countryside, after all, the most commonly sought after funds were those available for the development of agriturismo: the combining of agriculture with holiday letting.

An agriturismo might be a palatial hotel complex in the cornfields of Lazio, or it might be the humble conversion of a pretty stone pigsty in the Po valley (the pigs long since relocated to modern barns which, although airy and hygienic, did not have quite the same charm) into holiday apartments. Some continuing agricultural component was stipulated in order for the owner to qualify for a grant, which was why the owner of the pigsty might plant a hectare or two of Lambrusco vines to substitute for the pigs. So Montale kept a small herd of long-horned Maremman cattle down in the valley, where, winter and summer, they would wander through the trees behind Il Vignacce, their bells clanging mournfully as they went.

Montale had obtained his grants for the restoration of the old farm, and despite murmurings from the locals as to the wisdom or desirability of the conversion of so lonely and isolated a ruin, and a place, into the bargain, around which any number of rumours circulated, he had proceeded with his plans. The contractors had grumbled as their trucks skidded and plunged through the forest loaded with wood and cement, tanks for water and drainage, and pallets of new red cotto tiles. But with the blessing of five straight months of fine weather Il Vignacce was rebuilt. Even the old wood-fired oven on the north elevation, originally quite essential to the farm’s self-sufficency, was reconstructed, and the exterior stone staircase that mounted the front wall diagonally, no longer necessary for a farmer to live above his animals but attractive and above all, authentic, was lovingly filled and re-pointed. To furnish the place Montale weeded out the pieces of furniture from his own home that his wife had long wanted to replace – an old oak armoire with the wormholes filled, an old-fashioned marble-topped sideboard, a mirror or two. He sorted a couple of elderly fridges, missing a few attachments but sound enough, from among the junk that sat in his outbuildings, and only then did he take the pick-up to a newly opened Swedish discount furniture warehouse just outside Florence to fill in the gaps with cheap pine beds and cheerful linen.

The track to Il Vignacce from the main road was a project that Montale had left for another day, or perhaps another century, there being no public funds available for its restoration. The track was ten, maybe twelve kilometres or so of variable road surface (to put it charitably), not finished enough even to appear on the few maps available for the region. The thought that not all his foreign visitors might take it in their stride as easily as he did, bumping down it in the truck or a tractor, a couple of times a day, was one that he pushed to the back of his mind. So far, after all, none of his guests had actually got stuck down there, as Montale himself had once a year or so back, caught in a downpour that had washed away a whole section of the road. He had been forced to sleep in the cowshed adjoining Il Vignacce for a night while the rain pattered relentlessly on the tiles over his head, and his wife bawled him out on his mobile until the signal went. It had not been a night he would have wished to repeat, even in more comfortable conditions; perhaps it had been to do with the depth of darkness surrounding him, but the place had made him uneasy, and Piero Montale was not a superstitious man. He’d got back up in the end, cursing and skidding around each sodden bend, and as a result he’d taken a few basic measures on some of the more precarious stretches.

And now, at after eight on a late September evening, the broad pasture Il Vignacce surveyed was swallowed in darkness and the only vestige of the day was a faint lemon glow diluting the navy blue of the sky over to the west. The old farmhouse, long and low, all but one of its heavy iron shutters closed against the night, sat in a small pool of yellow light cast by the exterior lamp over its massive front door. For the last tenants to be staying at Il Vignacce this year, the holiday had begun.

 

The three cars in which Anna Viola had seen the English visitors pass her house were parked to one side on a skirt of close-cropped grass beneath the trees, ticking and sighing as their engines cooled in the night air. In the dark the trees seemed to come very close to the house on all sides but the front, where the light shone on open ground; they stood tall and still in the night air as though playing grandmother’s footsteps and just waiting for a moment of inattention by the inhabitants of Il Vignacce to creep ever closer. The house was divided in two, the larger half being on the south side, and here the iron shutters to the windows had been thrown open carelessly. A square of brilliant light shone on to the grass below the window, and inside, standing around the long wooden dining table, long enough to seat ten comfortably, stood the new arrivals.

‘Jesus Christ!’ exclaimed Lucien cheerfully. ‘What a road! Did they say anything about that on the website?’ He stared around goggle-eyed in a pantomime of amazement and, despite herself, Justine laughed. She shook his arm in mock reproof.

‘It won’t seem so bad once we’ve done it a few times,’ she said, but, looking round at their faces, tired and grey after the day’s travelling, still taut with anxiety over passports and tickets and timing, she wasn’t so sure.

And the journey, or at least the final stretch of it, had come as quite a shock. The farmer had turned abruptly off the main highway and the pretty terrace of a little farmhouse had come into view; for a brief moment Justine had thought they had arrived but the dusty pick-up had bounced past on the uneven road surface. They’d followed him down a steep slope into dense woodland, the trees absorbing what remained of the day’s light and plunging them into deep gloom.

Justine tried to remember whether there had been anything about the miles of dirt track in the description of the house; perhaps there had been a warning that the access road wasn’t suitable for all types of vehicle? Whatever there was had not conveyed the reality of five or more miles of lurching through dense forest on loose stones as darkness fell, descending hundreds of metres to the valley floor, climbing to cross a ridge only to start back down again. And all the time they had been obliged to keep up with the dusty pick-up rattling remorselessly on ahead.

On one ridge they had glimpsed a muddy-looking reservoir carved out of the red earth and beyond it the lights of a distant village. They passed through a bleak clearing where a logging lorry stood while a gang of ragged, dark-skinned labourers loaded it silently in the twilight, turning their heads to watch the cars as they bumped past, but offering no greeting.

Their little convoy had paused to open a gate about halfway down, giving rise to a weary cheer from Louisa and Tom’s car, but with a wave onwards the sandy-haired farmer climbed back up into the cab of his truck and set off again at speed. The sharp bends and precipitous dips had gone on for another ten minutes before they finally arrived, in pitch darkness, at the house. Il Vignacce. And even now Justine felt herself quail a little as the memory of the journey returned, and with it the sensation of having arrived at the most obscure and isolated place she had ever seen. She looked around the room to see how the others were reacting to the day’s journey.

Lucien looked the most buoyant of them, every detail of his appearance shrugging off the journey, but then he usually managed that kind of insouciance. Lucien’s dark hair was springy, and his smooth brown face, faded cotton shirt and worn corduroy trousers gave the impression that he belonged in such a rustic setting; this was his stock in trade. His photograph had always looked so perfect beside his short-lived gardening column that Justine sometimes wondered whether his face, and his gamekeeper’s shirts, had got him the job, rather than any expertise in the subject.

Lucien smiled as he looked around the room, giving off his habitual cheerful optimism. It was hard to believe, to look at him now, thought Justine, that Lucien had been reluctant to come on this trip; he looked as though he was ready for anything.

For the others the burden of expectation that accompanied every painstakingly planned holiday, that crucial time away from the office or the school run, was all too visible on their strained faces, along with the awful possibility of disappointment as they looked around the house, checking for ugly furniture, cramped accommodation, inauthentic fittings, a blighted view. Not much chance of the last, thought Justine, as they seemed to be miles from anywhere, not a light nor a sound. Although in the inky darkness that enveloped the house it was impossible to be sure. Looking around the room, Justine thought it didn’t look too bad at all; the floors were terracotta, the steel shutters painted a muted brown; old country furniture was set about with a few functional modern additions.

Justine looked at her husband again. Perhaps it was because Lucien didn’t work, at least not in any conventional sense, that he wasn’t really looking at the trip as a holiday and therefore wasn’t expecting perfect relaxation; for him it was a challenge. And of course whereas the others had been driving across Europe for almost three days, Lucien and Justine, unencumbered by children and all their paraphernalia, had only had to travel from the airport.

‘Good job we stopped at that supermarket,’ said Lucien. ‘God knows when we’ll feel up to getting out of here again. Shall I start cooking?’ And he pushed up his sleeves and pulled open a kitchen cupboard at random.

‘Saucepans look all right,’ he said, holding one up for inspection. ‘Nice and heavy.’ He began to sort through the carrier bags piled at his feet.

Louisa and Tom were sitting at the table, a couple of chairs apart, and they made no move to help Lucien, although Louisa smiled approvingly when he suggested lemon risotto. Two pendant lampshades hung low over the table, casting a warm light on the couple’s faces and from over their heads came the sound of children’s feet running, and the squeak of bedsprings. The lampshades trembled slightly with the vibrations transmitted through the terracotta by some vigorous bouncing.

‘He is marvellous,’ Louisa said, turning to Justine. ‘You’re so lucky. What I wouldn’t do for a man who can cook.’ She looked pointedly at her husband, who smiled in a benignly unfocused way, and ignored her inference with what seemed like equanimity.

‘I mean,’ Louisa continued, ‘you would have thought that a restaurant critic might have some interest in cooking his own food, wouldn’t you?’

Tom nodded and smiled. ‘Too many cooks, though, darling,’ he said, mildly. ‘We can’t all be multi-talented, can we? Clattering away together in the kitchen.’

Poor Tom, thought Justine. Not because Louisa was getting at him, again, but because whereas Louisa looked no older than she had when they first married, her short hair still a bright untarnished blonde, her skin smooth and golden against the clean pink cotton of her shirt, Tom looked old, suddenly – not just middle-aged but almost decrepit. His blue eyes were faded, and his fair skin had reddened, become as coarse as if he worked outside. Or lived rough, she thought. Although, obviously, given the perfect comfort of Tom and Louisa’s Regency house in Hammersmith, with its cream sofas, polished wood and silver-framed family photographs, that was not a possibility. Perhaps it’s just age, Justine thought. We’re all getting older.

Behind Tom and Louisa in the warm kitchen, where the light faded into the shadows at the far end of the long table, stood Martin, his serious, saturnine face shadowed with a day’s growth. Justine wondered where they’d stopped on the way down. Some motel in the Rhone valley, Martin had said, where perhaps he had not thought to shave. Perhaps he’s letting things slip just now, thought Justine; something about that wasn’t right. Martin had always been a very clean man, his clothes crisp from the iron, a smell of soap – even in the middle of all the turmoil. She thought of Martin’s modest North London house with Evie in it, the door opening on to a place that was always warm and bright, everything it contained somehow organized, speaking of a purpose and a proper place. Martin’s shirts on the ironing board, Dido’s sports kit bagged and labelled, the boots ranked in the hall. For the first time it occurred to Justine, who had only herself to organize, that Evie might have found it a burden, keeping all that order in others’ lives. Not any more.

By Martin’s side stood Dido, drooping a little, swaying almost imperceptibly with tiredness, her smooth dark head resting against her father’s shoulder and her face blank with the need to sleep. Almost as tall as me now, thought Justine. And suddenly she remembered her visit to that London maternity ward fourteen years earlier: the dusty, unwashed windows, the black eyes in the sallow, exquisite newborn’s face. Dido staring up at her from out of a cotton hospital blanket, cradled in her mother’s lap and, shining like a lighthouse above Dido, her mother’s face, beatific with happiness. Evie’s face.

‘You’ve got to do it, Just,’ she had said, glowing with life and with the urgency of her message, happy like Justine had never seen her. ‘It’s the best thing.’

Oh, Evie, thought Justine. Where are you now?

Behind her a cork popped as Lucien opened one of the dozens of bottles they’d bought at the supermarket on a dismal trading estate outside Florence. Their trolley, comically overloaded with alcohol, had seemed to Justine to mark them out as foreigners, or more precisely as British, as the sprinkling of Dutch, German and French shoppers also cruising the aisles didn’t seem to have the same priorities; the proportion of groceries to wine in their baskets seemed something like three to one. Their own was roughly the inverse. Justine was not, however, embarrassed enough to suggest that any of it should be put back; she thought they would probably need the lot, and more.

At the sound of the cork popping Justine saw Tom’s head jerk up from his examination of the table, his eyes coming into focus. Louisa’s lips were compressed with the beginnings of disapproval, and behind her Martin, his arm around his daughter, seemed to relax at last although his expression was, to Justine, as opaque as ever. Justine had never known Martin very well; her connection with him had always been through Evie, really. And, after all, she thought, looking around, how long is it since any of us were really friends? Fifteen years? And for a moment her heart dipped. What are we all doing here? she wondered.

It was late by the time he phoned but, as he had almost certainly known, Anna was not in bed yet. The older she got the harder she found it to settle, to decide to go to bed. Although, if she was honest, it had been like this since she had been alone again.

Anna ate modestly and early these days: a salad with chicory from the garden, perhaps a little piece of meat if she was feeling the need, or some peperonata with a slice or two of hard Tuscan bread. And always a glass of wine on the terrace, just one, to iron out any lingering anxieties the day might have brought her, to allow her to daydream, to permit her to count her blessings. Anna liked food well enough; loved cooking, when there was someone to cook for, but she couldn’t rid herself of the idea that eating alone was a waste of a meal. So she got it out of the way by seven, then she would light a fire, and curl up on the old divan in her little drawing room to do a bit of sewing, embroidery, knitting – something to calm her and give her a sense of purpose. She liked embroidery, particularly, because napkins, pillowcases, with an initial or a posy of flowers in the corner, were always useful and could be given away at random for weddings, christenings or birthdays. Knitting was not so neutral; it had a physical body in mind, and always reminded her that her son was too old to want her loopy sweaters any more, and there was no grandchild.

By eleven Anna’s eyes would be too tired to go on with close work. So she would leave the fire to die down and wander through the few but comfortable rooms of her house, straightening and patting and putting things away: a velvet cushion, her solitary knife and fork and plate by now quite dry on the draining board, a rug askew on the sofa. The house had two good-sized rooms downstairs, with a broad stone staircase leading upstairs between them, and the kitchen, which led out on to the terrace. The old kitchen door, with its thick distorting glass, now stood closed against the night. There were two bedrooms above, one of which was Anna’s, with a small stone balcony where she could step out and feel the cool morning air on her soft ageing skin. Both rooms were square and solid with chestnut beams overhead and undulating cotto floors thick with the red lead of centuries. Both looked out across the valley to the west, to the grey hills that rose and fell, one behind the other in darkening shades as they receded.

Sometimes Anna asked herself why she had come back here after all those years in the city. Her friends in Rome thought she was mad, certainly, to give up the city’s comfort and friendly chaos and her little flat nestled between the roofs in Trastevere, with her view of a belltower and a green sliver of the Tiber, and a glimpse across the rooftops to the Villa Borghese from the bathroom window. Anna knew why, of course. Not that she was sure she would know how to explain it to them, and after all she had not burnt her boats completely. The terms of her lease on the flat permitted her to transfer it to her son, and now Paolo lived there. Although it saddened her to think how little her flat – hard-won and precious as a jewel to her once – resembled a home these days.

 

When the phone had rung, at just before midnight, Anna was on her balcony in her nightdress and woollen shawl, standing under a sky speckled with stars and looking down in the direction of Il Vignacce. She was wondering about the English, who had arrived in their dusty cars when she had thought the season was over – the pale, serious faces she had glimpsed through the hedgerow. There had been children, she was sure. Perhaps September is not so late for them, she thought: they’re from the north, after all, and, besides, the sun this year had continued to shine throughout the harvest, making the faint, misty chill that had begun to creep in morning and evening seem benign, clearing the air and sharpening the colours of the leaves as they began to turn.

Anna pulled her shawl more tightly around her shoulders all the same, as she thought of Il Vignacce beside the dark, silent river so far below her in the woods, hidden by the deep folds in the mountain, the slabs of limestone pushed up millions of years ago, and the miles of undulating birch and ash and oak. She had heard the ring of the telephone downstairs, and hurried inside, grateful for the warmth that greeted her.

‘Mamma.’ Anna’s heart lifted and she smiled at the sound of her son’s voice, forgave him the almost imperceptible impatience perhaps only she would have heard in his voice, forgave him the lateness of his call and the gruffness that could not entirely disguise his affection.

‘Caro,’ she said. She could hear the unmistakable background noises of the hospital, an urgent, distant siren, the squeak of a trolley, and a conversation, the raised voice of a parent in distress and a surgeon’s soothing reply. She could picture Paolo exactly, standing in the cold concrete lobby where the lifts arrived, between his ward and the operating theatre. Orthopaedics. Broken bones. Trauma. He was smoking a cigarette, she could tell from the sound of his breathing, and using his mobile, standing beneath the sign that prohibited both activities. She could tell, too, that he was frowning, his high forehead almost permanently furrowed these days, since Olivia left him, or he left her, whatever the truth of it was.

‘Don’t smoke, caro. It’s not good for you.’ She heard him sigh. ‘So what about tomorrow? Are you just beginning your shift, or are you going home now?’

‘Just beginning. Well, an hour or so ago. I just did a broken elbow, a little English boy on holiday fell in the street, but that went well, he did just what I told him, tough little kid. He liked watching me put the bones together on the screen. Looks like it might be a quiet night, fingers crossed. I might even get some sleep.’

Anna found herself nodding, feeling a flush of pride as she thought of her son patiently mending the broken bone, maybe talking haltingly in his broken English to reassure the child. Her pride mixed with anxiety as she registered the weariness in his voice.

‘Don’t come if you haven’t slept, darling,’ she said, with a sigh. ‘It won’t be safe. And the roads are terrible back into Rome on a Sunday evening. But —’ she stopped.

‘Look, Mamma,’ Paolo said gently, I’ll come if I feel rested enough. Like I said, it looks like it might be a quiet night. And I’ve got a few days off, so I won’t have to rush back. Now I’ve got to go. A kiss for you, OK? Maybe see you tomorrow.’

Softly Anna put the phone down and climbed back up the stairs to her room, where she closed the long window on to her balcony, climbed gratefully into her soft old bed and fell asleep, at last, to dream of things that happened long ago, things that, waking, she would no longer remember.

 

Justine lay in the dark, Lucien beside her breathing evenly. It had been one of the things that Justine had first found irresistible about Lucien six, seven years ago: his knack of instant, tranquil sleep, his breath as regular as a metronome, his certainty. She had felt safe, sleeping alongside such a healthy, untroubled physicality, like a child’s body next to hers.

Justine had opened the window and pushed back the metal shutters to let in some air and the deep black of the clear night sky. Why did the shutters have to be so heavy, she wondered? They seemed to be made of solid steel. Perhaps because the place was shut up all winter, and, after all, you wouldn’t want to be making that trip down to check on things too often. A sensible precaution, then.

It was the children who voiced the feelings the adults had not expressed upon their arrival at Il Vignacce. Not Dido, who had remained silent throughout the meal, and who perhaps no longer counted as a child, all things considered, but Louisa’s two boys: Sam, the eleven year old, a large, fair, open-faced boy with Tom’s amiable smile, and his smaller, fiercer, darker brother Angus. They had taken the opportunity while Lucien made his risotto to investigate the house, flinging open cupboard doors and wrestling on the beds; they even appropriated the key to the smaller half of the farmhouse where Justine and Lucien and Martin and Dido would be staying, and rushed out into the darkness whooping and squealing to see whether it contained any more useful surprises than their own accommodation. Hoping for a television.

‘It’s a bit spooky, isn’t it, Mummy?’ Sam said, uncertainly, his exuberance distinctly muted as he came in out of the darkness. ‘I mean, it took ages to get here from the road, and there aren’t any lights or anything. It’s like – you know, a story or something. Like – Hansel and Gretel, that kind of story. And it’s very quiet. You can hear stuff in the woods, noises and stuff.’ He looked at them earnestly.

The adults sitting around the table all smiled at him, at least partly in recognition of the fact that, to all of them, the lonely house in the dark woods recalled the same stories. But by now they were in a mood to be indulgent about superstitious associations; the table had been laid and a second bottle of wine had been opened. Each adult face seemed softened, the lines expressing weariness and tension and anxiety ironed out by alcohol. Even Louisa looked a little flushed in the kitchen’s warmth, and kinder; beside her Tom sat with his arm around her shoulders and looked up with fondness at his son.

Martin and Dido were at the table, at least showing some willingness to be included in the party. Dido had been given her own glass of wine, and she sat with her hand cupped around it as though it was warming her. Justine had watched the girl as she looked around the table, the simulacrum of a feast, the illusion of a happy extended family united, and saw loneliness in the girl’s dark eyes.

Then Lucien had brought the risotto to the table, pale yellow and scented, and a salad full of the different coloured leaves he had rhapsodized over in the supermarket when he’d seen them stacked in bunches in their wooden trays, some shavings of parmesan, some grilled aubergines. A creamy, custard-yellow tart dusted with pine nuts and icing sugar sat on the side in its plastic box, testimony to the fact that Lucien always thought of everything.

Martin gave a little sigh, although Justine couldn’t have said whether of satisfaction or resignation; Tom and Louisa murmured something complimentary, backing each other up with enthusiasm. Sam and Angus, however, wrinkled their noses at the approach of the plate of pale, steaming rice and hunched their shoulders in silent refusal. Louisa sighed, stood up and went to the elderly fridge, which shuddered as she opened it, and brought them back bread and salami and triangles of processed cheese. This started Lucien off on one of his riffs about modern eating habits and the state of the nation and Justine could have kicked him this time as she watched Louisa struggle to justify her capitulation without starting an argument. Tom sighed and buried his nose in his wine glass.

‘Come on, Lucien.’ Everyone looked at Martin, who had barely spoken until now, his voice a little hoarse, as though rusty with underuse, but mild. ‘Wait till you’ve got children of your own. It’s not that easy.’

Lucien opened his mouth, but perhaps he realized for himself that the first night of their stay was not the right time to get started on the junk-food conversation, because he just shrugged and smiled.

‘Yeah, right. So, who wants risotto, who wants Dairylea triangles?’

Suddenly everyone seemed to be united in hunger. The long plate of risotto was handed up and down the long table and the boys busied themselves stacking up meat and cheese into toppling sandwiches they could hardly get into their mouths. The air drifting through the window was still warm and smelled sweet and foreign, the smell of acres and acres of uninhabited forest, some rich melange of wildflowers, decaying leaves, ripening fruit and river water. In the trees all around them the insects sang while they ate, steadily and happily. At the table Lucien put his arm around Justine and she leaned in against him gratefully.

‘How’s that?’ he said, kissing her lightly on the cheek. ‘Better?’

Justine nodded, and looked up at him, feeling herself soften and relax, tucked in beneath his arm. Across the table Louisa smiled fondly at them and although the smile creased and wrinkled the skin, just growing papery now, around her eyes she looked younger to Justine, more vulnerable. Perhaps it was the food, or the wine, but it felt as though this was really a holiday after all.

‘Good risotto, Lucien,’ said Tom. ‘Very good.’ He stuck his thumb up cheerfully and planted a kiss on Louisa’s cheek. She blushed and smiled. ‘What’s for pudding?’ Everyone laughed, and Justine experienced such sudden affection for all of them, from the squabbling boys with their cheeks shiny with grease, to Martin who had been unable to stop himself smiling at Tom’s indefatigable good nature, that she could feel it welling up behind her eyes.

On that point, somehow, the evening turned; it was as though, under the influence of wine and food and even perhaps an awareness that they were so far from anywhere, they had decided the holiday was going to work after all. Lucien, who had spotted the pizza oven on one side of the farmhouse and registered the ample supply of firewood littering the forest floor, began talking. . .