I found them in the shop together, a half-empty pot of chocolate on the counter between them. Josephine looked pink eyed but relieved, almost happy. Roux was laughing at some comment of hers, a strange, unfamiliar sound, exotic because it is so rarely heard. For a second I felt something almost like envy, thinking: They belong together.

I spoke to Roux about it later, when she had gone out to collect some shopping. He is careful to give nothing away when he speaks of her, but there is always a bright look in his eyes like a smile, waiting to happen. It seems he suspected Muscat already.

`She did well to get away from the bastard,' he says with casual venom. The things he did-' For a moment he looks embarrassed, turns, moves a cup on the counter for no reason, moves it back. -`A man like that doesn't deserve a wife,' he mutters.

`What will you do?’

I ask him.

He shrugs. `Nothing to do,' he tells me prosaically. `He'll deny it. The police aren't interested. Besides, I’d rather they didn't get involved.’

He does not elaborate. I take it that there are things in his past which may not bear scrutiny.

Since then, however, Josephine and he have spoken many times. She brings him chocolate and biscuits when he breaks from work, and I often hear them laughing. She has lost her scared abstracted look. I notice that she has begun to dress with greater care. This morning she even announced that she wanted to go back to the café to collect some things.

`I'll go with you,' I suggested.

Josephine shook her head. `I'll be all right on my own.’

She looked happy, almost elated with her decision. `Besides, if I don't face Paul-' She broke off, looking vaguely embarrassed. `I just thought I'd go, that's all,' she said. Her face was flushed, stubborn. `I've got books, clothes… I want to collect them before Paul decides to throw them away.’

I nodded. `When were you planning to go?’

Without hesitation: `Sunday. He'll be going to church then. With a little luck I'll be able to get in and out of the cafe without even meeting him. It won't take long.’

I looked at her. `You're sure you don't want company?’

She shook her head. `It wouldn't be right, somehow.’

Her prim expression made me smile, but all the same I knew what she meant. It was his territory – their territory indelibly marked with the traces of their life together. I didn't belong there.

`I'll be all right.’

She smiled. `I know how to handle him, Vianne. I've managed before.’

'I hope it won't come to that.’

`It won't.’

Absurdly, she reached out and took my hand, as if to reassure me. `I promise it won't.’

33

Sunday, March 23 Palm Sunday

THE BELL PEALS OUT FLATLY AGAINST THE WHITEWASHED walls of the houses and shops. Even the cobbles resonate with the sound; I can feel its dull buzz through the soles of my shoes. Narcisse has provided the rameaux, the palm crosses which I distribute at the end of the service and which will be kept in lapels, on mantelpieces, at bedsides, for the rest of Holy Week. I will bring you one too, pere, and a candle to bum by your bedside; I see no reason why you should be denied. The attendants look at me with thinly veiled amusement. Only fear and respect for my habit prevents them from laughing aloud. Their rosy nursery nurse faces glow with secret laughter. In the corridor, their girlish voices rise and fall in phrases made unintelligible by distance and the hospital acoustics: He thinks he can hear him – oh yes – thinks he's going to wake up – No, really? – No! – Talks to him, darling – heard him once – praying- Then schoolgirl laughter – hihihihihi! like scattered beads on the tiles.

Of course they dare not laugh at me to my face. They might be nuns in their clean white uniforms, their hair tied back beneath starched caps, their eyes lowered. Convent children, mouthing the formulae of respect oui, mon pere, non, mon pere – with a heart full of secret mirth. My congregation too has this truant spirit – a pert glance during the sermon, unseemly haste towards the chocolaterie afterwards – but today everything is orderly. They greet me with respect, almost with fear. Narcisse apologizes that the rameaux are not real palms, but cedar twisted and plaited to approximate the more traditional leaf.

`It's not an indigenous tree, pere,' he explains in his gruff voice. `It won't grow properly here. The frost scorches it.’

I pat his shoulder in a fatherly gesture. `Not to worry, mon fils.’

Their return to the fold has mellowed my mood so that I am avuncular, indulgent. `Not to worry.’

Caroline Clairmont takes my hand between her gloved fingers. `A lovely service.’

Her voice is warm. `Such a lovely service.’

Georges echoes her words. Luc stands at her shoulder, looking sullen. Behind him, the Drous, with their son, sheepish in his sailor collar. I cannot see Muscat amongst the departing congregation, but I suppose he must be there.

Caroline Clairmont gives me an arch smile. 'It looks as if we did it,' she says with satisfaction. `We've got a petition with over a hundred signatures on it-‘

'The chocolate festival.’ I interrupt her in a low voice, displeased. It is too public a place to discuss this. She fails to take the hint.

`Of course!' Her voice is high and excited. `We distributed two hundred leaflets. Collected signatures from half the people in Lansquenet. Visited every house'- she pauses, correcting herself scrupulously – `well, almost every house.’

She smirks. `With a few obvious exceptions.’

`I see.’

I make my voice frigid. `Well, perhaps we could discuss this at some other time.’

I see her register the snub. She reddens. `Of course, pere.’

She is right, of course. There has been a measurable effect. The chocolate shop has been almost deserted for the past few days. The disapproval of the Residents' Committee is no small matter, after all, in such a closed community, as is the tacit disapproval of the Church. To buy, to cavort, to gorge beneath the very eye of that disapproval… That takes a greater courage, a greater spirit of revolt than the Rocher woman gives them credit for. After all, how long has she lived here? The erring lamb returns to the fold, pere. By instinct. She is a brief diversion for them, that's all. But in the end they always revert to type. I do not fool myself that they do it out of any great feeling of contrition or spirituality – sheep are no great thinkers – but their instincts, bred in them from the cradle, are sound. Their feet bring them home, even when their minds have wandered. I feel a sudden burst of love for them today, for my flock, my people. I want to feel their hands in mine, to touch their warm, stupid flesh, to revel in their awe and their trust.

Is this what I have been praying for, pere? Is this the lesson I was meant to learn? I scan the crowd again for Muscat. He always comes to church on Sunday, and today, this special Sunday, he cannot have missed… And yet as the church empties I can still not see him. I do not recall him taking Communion. And surely he would not have left without exchanging a few words with me. Maybe he is still waiting in St Jerome 's I tell myself. The situation with his wife has troubled him greatly. Perhaps he needs further guidance.

The pile of palm crosses at my side diminishes. Each one dipped in holy water, a murmured blessing, a touch of the hand. Luc Clairmont pulls away from my touch with an angry mutter. His mother remonstrates weakly, sending me a feeble smile across the bowed heads. There is still no sign of Muscat. I check the church's interior: but for a few old people still kneeling at the altar it is empty. St Francis stands at the door, absurdly jolly for a saint, surrounded by plaster pigeons, his beaming face more like that of a madman or a drunkard than that of a holy man. I feel a twitch of annoyance at whoever placed the statue there, so close to the entrance. My namesake, I feel, should have more weight, more dignity. Instead this lumbering, grinning fool seems to mock me, one hand held out in a vague gesture of benediction, the other cradling the plaster bird to his round belly, as if dreaming of pigeon pie. I try to recall whether the saint was in the same position when we left Lansquenet, pere. Do you remember, or has it been moved since, perhaps by envious people who seek to mock me? St Jeromes, in whose name the place was built, has less prominence: in his dark alcove with the blackened oil-painting behind him he is shady, barely visible, the old marble from which he was hewn stained a nicotine-yellow by the smoke of a thousand candles. St Francis, on the other hand, remains mushroom-white in spite of the plaster's dampness, crumbling away in happy insouciance of his colleague's tacit disapproval. I remind myself to have him moved to a more appropriate spot as soon as possible.