I give a start. Gretchen is in the cleared patch of ground where Arnaud and I felled the silver birch. There’s no Michel or Lulu with her this time. She’s alone, making a daisy chain of the small white flowers that carpet the meadow grass. There’s a pleased look about her that for some reason makes me feel like I’ve been ambushed.
‘I didn’t see you,’ I say. ‘What are you doing down here?’
‘Looking for you.’ She rises to her feet, tying off the strand of flowers into a circle. ‘You promised me an English lesson this afternoon. Have you forgotten?’
I can remember her saying something in the kitchen but I’m pretty sure I didn’t promise anything. ‘Sorry, it’ll have to be some other time. I need to get back to work.’
‘You don’t have to go straight away, do you?’
She walks towards me, still with the unsettling smile. For a moment I think she’s going to put the daisy chain around my neck, and take an automatic step backwards. Instead she walks past, close enough for her thin dress to brush against me. Reaching up, she drapes it around the neck of a stone nymph.
‘There,’ she says. ‘What do you think?’
‘Very nice. Anyway, I should get back.’
But that’s easier said than done. Gretchen is standing in my way, and when I try to move around her she sidesteps to block me. She grins.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I told you, I’ve got work to do.’
‘Uh-uh.’ She shakes her head. ‘You owe me an English lesson.’
‘Tomorrow, maybe.’
‘Supposing I don’t want to wait?’
Her grin is mischievous and vaguely threatening. Or maybe that’s just my imagination. I have to resist the urge to move away from her again.
‘Your father’s going to wonder where I am,’ I say. But this time invoking Arnaud doesn’t work.
‘Papa’s asleep. He won’t know if you’re late.’
‘Mathilde will.’
Mentioning her sister is a mistake. ‘Why are you always so worried what Mathilde thinks?’
‘I’m not,’ I say hurriedly. ‘Look, I need to get back.’
She glares at me sullenly for a moment, then pretend-pouts. ‘All right, but on one condition. Bring me the necklace.’
She points at the flower chain hanging around the statue’s neck. ‘Why?’
‘You’ll see.’
With a sigh I go to the nymph and reach for the flowers. There’s a rustling from behind me, and I turn to see Gretchen’s dress slither to the ground.
She’s naked underneath.
‘Well?’ she says, smiling. The air in the woods suddenly seems closer than ever. She steps towards me. ‘Mathilde doesn’t look like this, does she?’
‘Gretchen…’ I begin, and then I hear the engine.
I look past her as Georges’s old 2CV wheezes into view on the track. I’m too stunned to move, but it’s too late anyway. I can see the old man sitting behind the steering wheel like a wrinkled schoolboy, and he can hardly miss us. But if he’s surprised by the sight of Gretchen standing naked in the middle of the track he gives no sign. As the Citroën bumps nearer, his face displays no more expression than when he killed the sow. Then the car turns off where the track forks to the sanglochon pens and disappears into the trees.
The sound of its engine fades. Gretchen stares after it before turning to me, wide-eyed.
‘Do you think he saw me?’
‘Unless he’s blind. Get dressed.’
Subdued, she does as she’s told. I don’t bother to wait. Leaving her in the woods, I head back to the farm, stabbing the walking stick into the rutted dirt of the track. The full impact of what’s just happened is only now starting to sink in. Christ knows what Arnaud will do when he finds out. He certainly won’t believe I didn’t encourage Gretchen, or that nothing’s happened between us. Yet as I walk through the grapevines it isn’t his reaction I’m worried about.
It’s Mathilde’s.
I almost go straight to the house there and then. Better if she hears it from me than Georges or Arnaud. Or Gretchen, God forbid: I dread to think what sort of spin she’ll put on this.
But by the time I’ve reached the barn I’ve talked myself out of it. If I tell Mathilde it’ll look as if I’m trying to cause trouble. Besides, Georges is such an enigma I’ve no idea what he’ll do. Maybe he’s so uninterested in anything except his pigs he won’t even say anything.
So instead I mix up a batch of mortar, angrily churning sand and cement together with a bucket of water. The beginning of a tension headache probes the back of my neck as I climb up the scaffold. I’ve no enthusiasm, and even the bucket seems heavier than usual. But I don’t know what else to do, and I might as well finish more of the wall while I wait for the fallout.
Something else falls instead. As I mechanically smooth mortar into the gaps between the stones I feel a wet splash on my cheek. I look up and see that the sky has darkened to a muddy grey. With a sound of dropping pennies, raindrops begin to spatter down onto the scaffold.
The weather has finally broken.
