His grandparents, regal and white-haired-Blanche with her parasol and Robert with his silver cigarette box that never left him, sitting on the shadowy hotel veranda and drinking their coffee. He would wave at them from the garden. His father’s sister, Solange, plump and sunburned, reading fashion magazines in her deck chair. Mélanie, small and wiry, a floppy sun hat framing her cheeks. And Clarisse raising her heart-shaped face to the sun. And their father turning up on weekends smelling of cigar smoke and the city. And the cobbled submersible road that fascinated him as a child and still did. The Gois passage. You could only use it at low tide. Before the bridge was built, in 1971, it was the only way to get onto the island.

He wanted to do something special for Mélanie’s birthday. He had been thinking about it since April. Not just another surprise birthday party with giggling friends hiding in the bathroom and laden with bottles of champagne. No, something different. Something she would remember. He needed to shift her out of the rut she was stuck in, her job that was eating up her life, her obsession with her age, and, above all, her not getting over Olivier.

He had never liked Olivier. Stuck-up, pompous snob. He cooked superbly. Made his own sushi. Specialized in Oriental arts. Listened to Lully. Spoke four languages fluently. Knew how to waltz. And couldn’t live up to commitment, even after six years with Mélanie. Olivier wasn’t ready to settle down. Despite being forty-one. So he had left Mélanie only to promptly get a twenty-five-year-old manicurist pregnant. He was now the proud father of twins. Mélanie never forgave him.

Why Noirmoutier? Because they had spent unforgettable summers there. Because Noirmoutier was the symbol of the perfection of youth, of those happy-go-lucky days when the summer vacation seemed endless, when you felt you were nine years old forever. When there was nothing more promising than a perfect day on the beach with friends. When school was a century away. Why hadn’t he ever taken Astrid and the children to the island? he wondered. Of course, he had told them all about it. But Noirmoutier was his private past, he realized, his and Mélanie’s, pure and untouched.