Hunches work sometimes; not others.
Adam found Romilly at the lake from Steffie’s note. She had stayed there after meeting Ella. Nowhere else to go; not until her flight the next morning.
Easy.
She was waiting for him like a mirage.
Now, it is not so easy.
Adam, Aurelia and I drive around the ring road of a town called Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. I imagine the best little bistros and wine bars live inside in the maze of narrow lanes we can just about peek down as we go but its front page is a beauty anyway.
Outside the window, carousel horses sit in wait, for the morning and the children to come. A tea bar is closed up too, buttery toast will be served steaming when the breakfast crowd arrive in a few hours. For now, it sleeps.
Next to it though, the terrace of the locals’ café is heaving at its seams, chalk lines through words I can’t translate showing that everything has been eaten tonight; all the specials at least sold out. Plates are collected with shared jokes; latecomers are greeted with bottles of bière and three kisses, children run around playing tag just outside; hoping they can stay up past their bedtime.
We move on.
A cat stalks across the road around the village, lazy so that we have to slow down, like she has had one too many vins rouge. The chocolate shop window is art and outside the seafood restaurant, prawns are so large they look like lobsters. But whole lobsters laugh in the face of them, even bigger, carried proud and high by beaming waiters.
I look at everyone I see, just in case. You, you, you.
I see someone who looks like Loll and am reminded too that it’s now over twenty-four hours since we have heard from her. The sick feeling spreads but I have to block it out; can only deal with this now. Loll will have to wait.
I look at the group popping olives into their mouths outside a high-end champagne bar, leaning in close, glasses filled with the palest of sparkling rosés.
At the queue outside the pizza van, anchois and jambon, trois fromage and champignons. Inside his vehicle, a man smiles, stretching dough like he is working on a sculpture.
‘It’s the biggest town in the area for touristy places to stay,’ Aurelia says as we pull off the road and take a quick left, and then up outside the fifth Airbnb on our list. ‘Van Gogh was in hospital here. Some juicy archaeological ruins. Quite a few …’
She catches herself, on detail no one has time for.
‘Anyway, it would be my best guess for somewhere you could rent a house or book a hotel room at short notice. And they must be staying somewhere.’
We see a battered old French Citroën, a car with German plates, mopeds, empty driveways. But Marc’s rental car is not outside this house, nor the next, nor the next.
I start the engine.
We try again.
Romilly’s mum looks at her phone. Gives me directions for where to go next.
Some momentum though is being lost as we try the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth.
Eventually the list runs out and we move back around the village, the spike of adrenalin that was flying around the car the last time we did this lap dissipated now as we fall silent.
I no longer check the bars.
Outside the window, stragglers sip the last of their aperitif and head to dinner. Middle-aged couples start long walks home; drives they shouldn’t do after all those kirs. A petite younger woman, alone, spritzes mosquito spray, rubs it into her neck. Swoops down to wipe the remainder onto her ankles for the walk home. I take a close look at her but then another woman joins her, she looks up. No. Not you.
We head up a smaller road now, supermarket closing its doors, Japanese noodle bar bringing steaming ramen to outdoor tables. We hold our breath as we get too close to passing French cars, going too fast with car doors that are almost concave.
Ad reaches for my shoulder. I put my own hand out to Aurelia.
The rest of the drive back to the campsite is quiet. Almost silent. There is nothing more to say.