‘I wonder, Guillaume, if you might know a girl by the name of Fabrissa?’

He thought for a moment, then shook his head.

‘What about Pierre? Perhaps your father. Could you ask?’ He turned around and I, keeping my tone light, carried on chattering, shoring up my defences against disappointment. ‘We were introduced at the fête, a couple of nights ago. Like an idiot, I didn’t catch her last name. Be interested to know where she lives.’

I heard Breillac repeat her name, but he was shaking his head, and so was Pierre. Guillaume turned back to face me. ‘No,’ he reported, ‘they don’t know of such a girl.’ Then he added, ‘My father says he didn’t see you, monsieur, at the Ostal.’

My stomach gave an unpleasant lurch.

‘He didn’t?’ I paused. ‘Well, it was crowded. Hard to see anyone much. I didn’t even catch a glimpse of Madame Galy all night and it was she who’d invited me. The way of these things, I suppose.’ I paused. ‘Your father didn’t get caught up in the brawl?’ I gave a brittle laugh. ‘Do you know, I thought it was real to start with. Those swords and helmets, very convincing.’

Guillaume’s eyes cut into me. ‘Brawl, monsieur?’

‘The fight, then,’ I said. ‘The punch-up.’ I stopped and looked at him. ‘You were there, Guillaume? The fête de Saint-Etienne?’

‘I was. We all were.’

Guillaume was genuinely baffled and I, feeling I had somehow blotted the day for us all, said nothing more. But it preyed on my mind. Even admitting I was rather preoccupied at the time, it was queer that my recollection of the evening was so at odds with theirs.

We walked on, barely talking as the path grew steeper yet. At last, I made out the junction where the two paths became a single track leading back up to the road.

We stopped to catch our breath. It was then that I felt the familiar prickling at the nape of my neck, the same thickening of the air. I glanced up into the dense undergrowth to my left and, in the gloom, made out the gnarled roots of some ancient trees, vanishing into the mountain.

‘Like stairs,’ I murmured, hearing Fabrissa’s voice in my head.

‘Monsieur, it is this way, yes?’

‘What?’

I realised my three companions had stopped and were waiting on me for further directions.

‘That’s right, yes. Straight on.’

It was close to eleven-thirty when we emerged from the path by the wooden sign.

We halted a while to rest. I offered my cigarettes, and Breillac senior passed round a canteen of a foul, aniseed-flavoured liqueur. Each of us took a swig, then wiped it off with our gloves before passing it on.

The atrocious weather conditions of two days ago, and my disorientation immediately after the smash, meant I couldn’t estimate with any accuracy how much further along the road I was when the accident happened. In the event, we walked for no more than five minutes before the yellow Austin came into view.

‘Voilà,’ I shouted, relieved to see that my motor car had not toppled over completely. ‘Voilà la voiture.’

Half skating up the icy road, half walking, it took no more than a minute or two to cover the last couple of hundred yards. The four of us stared at the yellow car, Breillac and his sons talking too fast for me to follow.

I watched Guillaume take the coil of rope from around his shoulder and tie it to the rear bumper. He then looped it around his waist, and Pierre followed suit. They braced their knees and began to pull, Breillac standing by and hollering like a barker at the fish market.

With the scraping of metal on the hard ground and grunts from the boys, the car was slowly dragged back from the edge of the precipice until all four wheels were back on terra firma.

‘Splendid,’ I said, nodding to Guillaume. ‘Et à vous, Pierre, merci.’

Guillaume untied the rope, then stood back to allow Breillac a clear view. He walked around the battered little car as if he were at an auction, shaking his head as he pointed at the axle, at the buckled front wheel arch, at some indeterminate piece of cable that hung down like a torn thread. His expression alone announced it was going to be difficult to fix.

‘Quatre, cinq jours, minimum.’

‘He says-’

‘Four or five days, yes. Can you ask him what he thinks we should do now? Is there a garage in Nulle? Or do we need to think about getting it towed to Tarascon?’

Guillaume turned to his father to start up another lengthy discussion, so I removed myself a little way from their loud voices and sat on a rock. The sun had risen over the mountain and it was, if not actually warm, then at least not properly cold. There was the odd snatch of birdsong, and the air was filled with the smell of pine resin.

I shielded my eyes against the lacy glare of the white sun on the mountains and scanned the slopes below the road. There were no houses, no signs of human habitation that I could see. Guillaume confirmed it. Apart from the shepherds’ huts, deserted in winter, no one lived this high in the valley. It was too harsh an environment, too bitterly cold and exposed.

I lit a cigarette, thinking of what Fabrissa had said. The path along which she and her family had travelled was overgrown with box and… and what? I drummed my fingers on my knee, box leaves and… I got it.

‘Silver birch. Evergreen box trees and silver birch.’

Both were common in this part of France, but I could see both from where I was sitting. The distinctive silver and black markings of a cluster of birch trees and, a little to the right of them, the deep green of box shrubs. Confirmation, surely, I was on the right track?

‘And maybe where I’ll find her…’

‘Monsieur?’ said Guillaume, a quizzical look on his face.

I flushed. ‘Thinking aloud,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘What news? What does your father suggest?’

I tried to pay attention as Guillaume outlined Breillac’s plan, but my thoughts kept slipping back to the patch of earth below us.

‘… if that is agreeable to you, monsieur. If not, we will find another way.’

I realised Guillaume had stopped talking and was looking at me.

‘Forgive me. I didn’t catch that. Could you…?’

Guillaume began again in his slow, steady voice.

‘As my father sees it, there are two…’

Out of the corner of my eye I saw something move in the valley below. A flash of blue, perhaps. I couldn’t tell. I took a step forward and, using the tips of the bare branches of the silver birch as my sight-line, traced a direct line to the hillside on the opposite side of the valley. I narrowed my gaze and hit upon an overhang of grey rock, sheltered by trees. There seemed to be a shelf in the rock and, though it was hard to make out, perhaps an opening, in the shape of an eyebrow.

‘… so given the damage to the chassis,’ Guillaume concluded, ‘my father thinks it is a job for a trained mechanic. An old colleague of his works chez Fontez in Tarascon, so he could get you a good price.’

‘Is it possible to get up over there?’ I pointed south-east at the opposite escarpment.

If Guillaume was offended by my inattention, he didn’t show it.

‘If you keep straight on this road, then drop down near Miglos. Though I don’t know why anyone would want to. There’s nothing there.’

‘What about from this side of the valley? From here? Is there a path up through these woods?’

‘If there is, I don’t know of it.’ He shrugged. ‘There was mining in that section of the mountains, before my time, to open up a new route south. Twenty years ago. It changed the shape of the land and the hills.’ He paused. ‘So it is possible there is a path, but it would be a hard climb.’

‘Yes, it would,’ I murmured, thinking of a courageous girl and a boy too ill to walk far.