I shrugged indifferently.

“So? What do I care?”

Josephine put her fists to her temples in a gesture of frustration.

“You have to warn them,” she repeated. “Tell them to go. Warn Armande too. Tell her he read her name out this morning. And yours. He’ll read mine out as well if he sees me here, and Paul?”

“I don’t understand, Josephine. What can he do? And why should I care, anyway?”

“Just tell them, all right?” Her eyes flicked warily to the church again, from which a few people were drifting. “I can’t stay,” she said. “I have to go.”

She turned towards the door.

“Wait, Josephine?”

Her face as she turned back was a blur of misery. I could see that she was close to tears.

“This always happens,” she said in a harsh, unhappy voice. “Whenever I find a friend he manages to ruin it for me. It’ll happen the way it always does. You’ll be well out of it by then, but me?”

I took a step forward, meaning to steady her. Josephine pulled back with a clumsy gesture of warding.

“No! I can’t! I know you mean well, but I just – can’t!” She recovered with an effort. “You have to understand. I live here. I have to live here. You’re free, you can go where you like, you?”

“So can you,” I replied gently.

She looked at me then, touching my shoulder very briefly with the tips of her fingers.

“You don’t understand,” she said without resentment. “You’re different. For a while I thought maybe I could learn to be different too.” She turned, her agitation leaving her, to be replaced by a look of distant, almost sweet, abstraction. She dug her hands into her pockets once more. “I’m sorry, Vianne,” she said. “I really tried. I know it isn’t your fault.” For a moment I saw a brief return of animation to her features. “Tell the river people,” she urged. “Tell them they have to go. It isn’t their fault either – I just don’t want anyone to be hurt,” finished Josephine softly. “All right?”

I shrugged. “No-one is going to be hurt,” I told her.

“Good.” She gave a smile painful in its transparency. “And don’t worry about me. I’m fine. I really am.” Again that stretched, painful smile. As she edged past me through the door I caught a glimpse of something shiny in her hand, and saw that her coat pockets were stuffed with costume jewellery. Lipsticks, compacts, necklaces and rings spilled from between her fingers. “Here. This is for you,” she said brightly, pushing a handful of looted treasure at me. “It’s OK. I’ve got lots more.”

Then with a smile of dazzling sweetness she was off, leaving me with chains and earrings and pieces of bright plastic set in gilt weeping from my fingers onto the floor.

Later in the afternoon I took Anouk for a walk into Les Marauds. The travellers’ camp looked cheery in the new sunlight, with washing flapping on lines drawn between the boats, and all the glass and paint gleaming. Armande was sitting in a rocking-chair in her sheltered front garden, watching the river. Roux and Mahmed were perched on the roof’s steep incline, resetting the loose slates. I noticed that the rotten facia and the gable-ends had been replaced and repainted a bright yellow. I waved at the two men and sat on the garden wall next to Armande while Anouk raced off to the river bank to find her friends of last night.

The old lady looked tired and puffy-faced beneath the brim of a wide straw hat. The piece of tapestry in her lap looked listless, untouched. She nodded to me briefly, but did not speak. Her chair rocked almost imperceptibly, tick-tick-tick-tick, on the path. Her cat slept curled beneath it.