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so unnerving that she had grabbed Ryan from school, borrowed some cash from her mother and booked an easy Jet flight from the nearest Internet café. They had ended up in the South of France because a flight to Nice was affordable and available, but living here was almost as expensive as in London, and she was running low on funds.
    All she could do was wait for the cheque to clear in her bank account, knowing that Jack would try to cancel it when he realised where she had taken Ryan. They had caught a train east, along the coast, looking for somewhere cheap to stay, and disembarked from the first tiny station they reached, the village of Eze-sur-Mer.
    High above them—an hour’s walk into the Savaric cliffs—was the other Eze, an ancient
village perché
consisting of shops selling tasselled velvet cushions and Provence tablecloths in the colours of sea and sunshine. Low-ceilinged galleries were filled with lurid daubs of boats at rest, postcards and fridge magnets. Far below, away from tourists searching for a taste of the old country, there was barely anything to indicate a town; a single restaurant called La Vieille Ville, a closed bar, a modest little hotel without stars, commendations or any other guests, and stepped parades of shuttered villas built on the forested scree beneath the cliffs. At the only café, the passing of a car was enough to make the proprietor step out and watch with his dishtowel over his shoulder.
    It was the perfect place to hide away, a town as lost from recollection as any oubliette.
    Mme Funes, the sticklike proprietor of L’Auberge des Anges, had a permanently puckered look on her face that might have been due to excessive sunlight or general disapproval of the world. She wore a dead auburn wig that made her resemble the corpse of Shirley Bassey, and was always to be found lurking behind the bar within clawing distance of the cash register. Whenever Madeline addressed her, Mme Funes headed off any attempt to speak French with a barrage of tangled English that was presumably less offensive to her ears. Her grey-skinned husband possessed a similar air of resurrection, and had the habit of peering through the hatch of the kitchen like a surprised puppeteer whenever Madeline passed. His presence in the kitchen obviously had nothing to do with cooking, as
daube de boeuf
and
salade niçoise
were the only specials to appear on the blackboard.
    Before dinner, Madeline and her son risked further disapproving looks by venturing out to the little village park, where they sat watching distant cruise ships pass between San Remo and Nice like floating fairgrounds. The temperature, so long as you stayed in sunlight, remained at eighteen degrees centigrade. The flower beds were immaculately trimmed, banks of pink and saffron petals ruffled around the stems of attenuated palms in a colour combination that seemed to exist only in France. As distant church bells rang, a solemn procession passed their bench, something to do with the patron saint of bees. Fat paper statues were solemnly held aloft in displays of orange and yellow artificial flowers, a reminder that the customs of other countries would forever remain mysterious to outsiders.
    Ryan watched in amazement as purple bougainvillea petals were scattered by a troop of surpliced choristers following a giant paper bee perched on a honeypot, in a blessing ceremony that appeared to dovetail artisanship and religion. Moments after the priests and children had been lost from view, Madeline realised that her handbag had been taken from beside her feet.
    ‘It’s got everything in it,’ she said, scanning the surrounding grass, ‘my passport, my paperback, all our remaining money.’
    ‘Why would you do that?’ Ryan accused.
    ‘I didn’t trust the hotel, I thought it would be better with me. Help me look.’
    They were still searching the ground when she raised her eyes and saw the bag held in his tanned fist. He gave a tentative smile, and despite his