Marianne had stumbled three miles along the road before she realized that she wasn’t fleeing toward the sea. She was standing at the crossroads that led right to Pont-Aven and left to Concarneau. She set down her suitcase, sat on it and rested her hands on the leather. She could hardly breathe for pain. Weakly she raised her thumb—the international signal of runaways and loners, of all those who can no longer bear to be stuck where they are.

No one stopped. The occasional car honked its horn. She continued to hold her thumb out into the empty air.

Eventually, a yellow Renault Kangoo drew up alongside her. A woman with a curly blond bob opened the door for her. Marianne scrutinized the woman’s face to find out whether she had only stopped because she had recognized her.

The woman introduced herself as Adela Brelivet from Concarneau. “My name’s…” Marianne began, then paused. There was a search on for Marianne Messmann, so that was the one person she wasn’t. Also, the woman’s smile irritated her: she showed her teeth, but her eyes remained cool. “My name’s Maïwenn.”

“Maïwenn? That’s an interesting name. You know it’s a combination of Marie and ‘white,’ don’t you? White Maria?” Adela babbled. “Adela means something too. I’ll let you in on a secret: it means love.” She let out a shriek of laughter.

Adela talked for a full twenty minutes as the landscape flashed by. The small villages, the roundabouts, the red-and-white place names. Tears ran in a continuous stream down Marianne’s cheeks. Yann. Yann! It hurt as much as if her heart had been cut out without anaesthetic. Adela prattled on, oblivious, as Marianne wept silently.

Concarneau, at last. When they pulled up at the traffic lights outside the covered market, Adela leaned across Marianne to open the door and wished her a pleasant journey. It sounded mocking. Marianne got out, pulling the suitcase after her, and the yellow Kangoo roared away.

Marianne turned this way and that. Where to? Where do I go from here? She watched a flock of crows heading inland from the Atlantic. Pascale Goichon, her dear friend and witch, had said that crows were a sign, so she followed them. She approached the market, her suitcase growing heavier and heavier. When she had reached the far end of the market square, still guided by the birds’ flight, she came to the marine center, then the harbor wall, and suddenly she was gazing out over the wide, glittering gray-blue Atlantic. The clouds, hanging low over the land, did not venture out beyond the shore, acting as if they were an invisible wall that divided the sky into two—one part a deep, noble blue, the other a land sky, dotted with whitecaps. Two separate worlds.

The soft roar of the waves and the erratic, flighty beating of her heart overlapped inside Marianne’s head. Fifty yards on, she happened upon an old, squat church whose thick sandstone walls had been eaten away by salt water.

In front of the plain portal, a sign read: “Priest available.” For spiritual emergencies, Marianne thought. Next to the church was a telephone booth. She stepped inside, took out a few coins, pushed them into the slot and dialed the number of a house at the end of a cul-de-sac in Celle. There was a whistling on the line, as if the wind were rushing through it, but then the sound changed and the phone rang. Once. Twice. After the third tone, Lothar picked up.

“Messmann!”

Marianne clapped her hand to her mouth. His voice was so close!

“Hello? This is Messmann!”

The digital display showing her credit blinked: a cent less every ten seconds. What should she say?

“Answer me. Now!”

Marianne’s mind was empty.

“Marianne? Annie, is that you?” There was not a single word she wanted to say to her husband. “Marianne! Don’t mess things up! Tell me where you are right now! I can see on the display…Is that France? Are you still in—”

She hurriedly hung up and left the telephone booth, wiping her hands on her coat as if she had to get rid of an invisible stain. She went into the church, and the cool air inside the sandstone building dried her sweat. Plain, bare wooden pews, a silver cross above the altar, a model ship in a corner. She made her way cautiously to the confessional box next to the sacristy; it looked like a worm-eaten wardrobe with three doors.

“Hello?” she whispered.

“Allo,” replied a deep voice from inside the wardrobe.

She opened the left-hand door, saw a bench and a prayer stool with a purple velvet cushion on it, entered and closed the door behind her. She gave a sigh of relief. On the other side of the close-meshed iron grille the vague outline of a face hovered white and pale, its dark nostrils gigantic. The figure mumbled reassuringly.

She leaned back; she felt safe here. Safe from questions, safe from answers. Why had she run away from Yann? Where was she to go? Why was she still not dead?

“I wanted to kill myself,” she began quietly.

There was no response from the other side of the grille.

“Damn! I’ve done everything wrong! I actually wanted…”

What did I want? I only wanted to live. Just live. Without fear. Without regrets. I want friends. I want love. I want to do something. I want to work. I want to laugh. I want to sing. I want…

“I want to live. I want to live!” she repeated out loud.

The whites of the priest’s eyes gleamed fiercely on the other side of the grille.

“You see, I have a husband I can’t bear to be with anymore. I had a life I can’t stand anymore. But I no longer want to end it all,” whispered Marianne. “That’s…too easy.”

Sixty. It definitely wasn’t too late. It’s never too late, she thought. Never, not even an hour before the void.

“I want to get drunk at last!” she said more loudly. “I want to wear red underwear! I want a family. I want to play the accordion. I want my own room and my own bed! I’m so fed up of hearing, ‘You can’t do that! What will people think? You can’t have your cake and eat it. Dreams are all an illusion.’ Mad—my husband thinks I’m mad, that’s what he announced on television! I feel so ashamed, and I hate him for making me feel that way.

“And now I want to sleep with Yann again! Do you know how long it had been since my last orgasm before Yann? So long! I want a man who’s interested in how I feel. I want desire and Yann and to eat lobster with my fingers.” She got up, bumping her head. “And I don’t want to leave Kerdruc. There you go!”

Oh no, I’m not going to leave Kerdruc of my own free will. They’ll have to catch me and tie me up and carry me away.

She let herself fall back onto the bench before addressing the priest again. “Thank you, you’ve really helped me.”

“You’re welcome, madame,” the man said in a low voice. In German.

Marianne jumped to her feet in shock and hurried out of the wardrobe at the same time as the priest. It wasn’t a priest, but a man in a black roll-neck sweater with thick glasses, thinning blond hair and a notepad in his hand.

“I live out in Cabellou for half the year. I’m from Hamburg and I’m a writer. I’m sorry I didn’t immediately…I was so surprised when you came in and sat down. And then you were in such full swing that…Good grief, no one could make up those things you said!”

Marianne stared at him. “Of course not,” she said. “It’s true.”

“I wonder if my wife sometimes thinks I’m not really interested in how she feels. Do you think that we men don’t respect women enough as women?”

“Do you have a car?” she asked instead of answering.

The writer nodded.

“Could you drive me to Kerdruc?”