Braziers glowed; candlelight shadows trembled on the walls; vases of pink tulips decorated each table; and there was enough food, Simon thought, for a prolonged siege—terrines, charcuterie, salads, cheeses, a vast daube keeping warm over a bed of charcoal, gâteaux and tarts and a gigantic bowl of Ernest’s dangerously alcoholic trifle. Nobody would leave hungry. Simon opened the door and looked up and down the empty street. The village was silent. He felt the doubt that hosts experience in that empty waiting period when everything is ready and nobody is there. “They’re not exactly lining up to get in,” he said. “Perhaps I’d better go into Cavaillon and rent a few bodies.” Nicole laughed. “They’ll come, don’t worry. Didn’t you see this afternoon? Half the village was trying to look inside.” Simon remembered seeing a couple through the open door while a delivery was being made. They were tall, in their mid-thirties, pasty-faced and dressed in dingy colours. The man wore the kind of narrow, faintly sinister sunglasses affected by out-of-work actors hoping to be recognised.
