I did not find him, though I spent an hour on the banks of the Tannes looking. Even my mother's methods failed to reveal him. I did find where he was sleeping, however. A house not far from Armande's, one of the least run-down of the derelicts. The walls are slick with damp, but the top floor seems sound enough and there is glass in several of the windows. Passing by I noticed that the door had been forced open, and that a fire had been lit recently in the living-room grate. Other signs of occupancy; a roll of charred tarpaulin salvaged from the fire, a stack of driftwood, a few pieces of furniture, presumably left in the house as being of no value. I called Roux's name, but there was no answer.

By eight-thirty I had to open La Praline, so I abandoned the search. Roux would emerge when he wanted to. Guillaume was waiting outside the shop when I arrived, although the door was unlocked.

`You should have gone inside to wait for me,' I told him.

`Oh no.’

His face was gravely mocking. `That would have been taking a liberty.’

`Live dangerously,' I advised him, laughing. `Come in and try some of my new religieuses.’

He still seems diminished since Charly's death, shrunken to less than his size, his young-old face impish and wizened with grief. But he has retained his humour, a wistful, mocking quality which saves him from self-pity. This morning he was full of what had happened to the river-gypsies.

`Not a word from Cure Reynaud at Mass this morning,' he declared as he poured chocolate from the silver pot. `Not yesterday or today. Not a single word.’

I admitted that, given Reynaud's interest in the travelling community, this silence was unusual.

`Perhaps he knows something he can't tell,' Guillaume suggested. `You know. The secret of the confessional.’

He has seen Roux, he tells me, talking to Narcisse outside his nurseries. Perhaps he can offer Roux a job. I hope so.

`He often takes on occasional labourers, you know,' said Guillaume. `He's a widower. He never had children. There's no-one to manage the farm except a nephew in Marseille. And he doesn't mind who he takes on in the summer when it gets busy. As long as they're reliable it doesn't matter whether they go to church or not.’

Guillaume gave a little smile, as he does when he is about to say something he considers daring. `I sometimes wonder,' he said reflectively, `whether Narcisse isn't a better Christian, in the purest sense, than me or Georges Clairmont – or even Cure Reynaud.’

He took a mouthful of his chocolate. `I mean, at least Narcisse helps,' he said seriously. `He gives work to people who need the money. He lets gypsies camp on his land. Everyone knows he was sleeping with his housekeeper for all those years, and he never bothers with church except as a means of seeing-his customers, but at least he helps.’

I uncovered the dish of religieuses and put one on his plate. `I don't think there is such a thing as a good or bad Christian,' I told him. `Only good or bad people.’

He nodded and took the little round pastry between finger and thumb. `Maybe.’

A long pause. I poured a glass for myself, with noisette liqueur and hazelnut chips. The smell is warm and intoxicating, like that of a woodpile in the late autumn sun. Guillaume ate his religieuse with careful enjoyment, dabbling the crumbs from the plate with a moistened forefinger.

`In that case, the things I've believed all my life – about sin and redemption and the mortification of the body you'd say none of those things mean anything, wouldn't you?’

I smiled at his seriousness. `I'd say you've been talking to Armande,' I said gently. `And I'd also say that you and she are entitled to your beliefs. As long as they make you happy.’

`Oh.’

He watched me warily, as if I were about to sprout horns. `And what – if it isn't an impertinent question what do you believe?’

Magic-carpet rides, rune magic, Ali Baba and visions of the Holy Mother, astral travel and the future in the dregs of a glass of red wine…

Florida? Disneyland? The Everglades? What about it, cherie? What about it, hein?

Buddha. Frodo's journey into Mordor. The transubstantiation of the sacrament. Dorothy and Toto. The Easter Bunny. Space aliens. The Thing in the closet. The Resurrection and the Life at the turn of a card… I've believed them all at one time or another. Or pretended to.

Or pretended not to.

Whatever you like, Mother. Whatever makes you happy.

And now? What do I believe right now? `I believe that being happy is the only important thing,' I told him at last.

Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive.

In the afternoon Josephine came. Anouk was back from school, and ran off almost at once to play in Les Marauds, wrapped tightly in her red anorak and with strict instructions to run back if it began to rain. The air smells sharp as new-cut wood, slicing low and sly round the angles of buildings. Josephine was wearing her coat buttoned to the neck, her red beret and a new red scarf which fluttered wildly in her face. She walked into the shop with a defiant look of assurance, and for a moment she was a radiant, striking woman, cheeks flushed and eyes sparkling with the wind. Then the illusion dispersed and she was herself once more, hands digging fiercely into her, pockets and head lowered as if to headbutt some unknown' aggressor. She pulled off her beret revealing wildly tousled hair and a new, fresh welt across her forehead. She looked both terrified and euphoric.

`I've done it,' she declared recklessly. 'Vianne, I've done it.’

For a dreadful instant I was sure she was going to confess to murdering her husband. She had that look a wild and lovely look of abandon – her lips drawn back over her teeth as if she had bitten into a sour fruit. Fear came from her in alternating hot and cold waves.

`I've left Paul,' she said. `I've done it at last.’

Her eyes were knives. For the first time since we met I saw Josephine as she was before ten years of Paul-Marie Muscat made her wan and ungainly. Half-mad with fear, but underneath the madness, a sanity which chills the heart.

`Does he know yet?’

I asked, taking her coat. The pockets were heavy, though not, I thought, with jewellery.

Josephine shook her head. `He thinks I'm at the grocer's,' she said breathlessly. `We ran out of microwave pizzas. He sent me out to stock up.’

She gave a smile of almost childish mischief. `And I took some of the housekeeping money,' she told me. `He keeps it in a biscuit tin under the bar. Nine hundred francs.’

Beneath the coat she was wearing a red jumper and a black pleated skirt. It was the first time I could remember her wearing anything but jeans. She glanced at her watch.

`I want a chocolat espresso, please,' she said. `And a big bag of almonds.’

She put the money on the table. `I'll have just enough time before my bus leaves.’

`Your bus?’ I was puzzled. `To where?’

`Agen.’

Her look was mulish, defensive. `Then I don't know. Marseille, maybe. As far away from him as I can get.’

She gave me a look of suspicion and surprise. `Don't start saying I shouldn't do it, Vianne. You were the one who encouraged me. I'd never have thought of it if you hadn't given me the idea.’

`I know, but-' Her words sounded like an accusation. `You told me I was free.’

True enough. Free to run, free to take off on a word from a virtual stranger, cut loose like an untethered balloon to drift on the changing winds. The fear was suddenly chill certainty in my heart. Was this the price of my remaining? To send her out in my place? And what choice had I really given her? `But you were safe.’

I choked out the words with difficulty, seeing my mother's face in hers. To give up her safety in exchange for a little knowledge, a glimpse of an ocean… and what then? The wind always brings us back to the foot of the same wall. A New York cab. A dark alley. A hard frost.