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eyes. ‘You’re going to have to fill me in, girls. Who’s Marc Fleury?’
    â€˜A writer,’ said Claire, glaring at me.
    â€˜I’ve not heard of him,’ said Freddy. ‘What sorts of things does he write?’
    â€˜Mystery novels for kids. Set in Roman times. I just read one of his books. It’s funny, though,’ Claire added. ‘I didn’t see him on the plane.’
    â€˜Bet you he was the reason the plane was delayed taking off,’ I said. ‘They said they were waiting for some late passengers. That would be just their style, keeping other people waiting. And he would’ve been in business class, any money, and we were stuck right at the back of economy, so we wouldn’t have seen him when he got off in Toulouse either.’ I grinned at Claire. ‘Anyway, here he is. Nice surprise for some, eh?’
    She shrugged.
    â€˜I bet he hasn’t just come as a tourist. I bet he’s going to set one of his books here,’ I said, ‘and he’s going to get his mates to do all the hard slog, all the research and stuff. Watch out or you’ll be roped in too.’
    â€˜Oh shut up, Syl, what would you know?’ said Claire crossly, but without real anger. I could see she’d had that idea about him being here to write a book already – and liked it.
    â€˜Wouldn’t it be funny if he was writing about Herod too?’ I said to Freddy.
    â€˜Very,’ said Freddy, not sounding all that amused. I suppose writers must get pretty competitive about that sort of thing. ‘Well, how about we have a bite to eat, eh?’
    It was a great lunch. There was a big salad, and a yummy quiche she’d made the day before, and a whole selection of amazing cheeses, the best bread and butter I’d ever had in my life, and a really nice cold, sweet mint tea. It was utterly delicious and we fell on it like we hadn’t eaten in a week. I hadn’t realised how hungry I was till that moment. Our last meal on the plane had been ages ago. And hardly satisfying.
    â€˜I’m going to have to get back to work,’ said Freddy as we sat over our cups of coffee after we’d finished eating. ‘You girls going to be okay? Have a sleep if you’d like.’
    â€˜Oh no. It’s not good to sleep in the day when you’ve been on a plane. Makes the jet lag worse,’ said Claire. ‘I think I’ll have a look around the town.’
    â€˜I think I’ll come with you,’ I said, grinning at her. ‘Lots of things to see here, yeah? Don’t want to miss any of them.’
    She gave me the death stare, of course. But all she said was, ‘If you like. I don’t care one way or the other.’
    You’ve got to be joking. As if she didn’t. But she couldn’t do anything about it. Not with Freddy watching us both with an amused glint in her eye. It would have been too undignified. And big sisters like to keep their dignity at all times. It goes with the job, I reckon.

Guardian angel
    Walking around in a place where there are basically no cars gives you a really strange feeling. It’s not just that it’s much quieter, or that you don’t have to be careful when you cross a road. It’s that not having any traffic at all isn’t normal, so it makes you feel like you’ve entered a different world. A kind of artificial world. As if you’ve wandered onto a stage set or a film set just before the main actors are about to walk in and say their first lines.
    The medieval part of St-Bertrand, high up on its rocky hill, was like that, with the few people wandering around it looking rather like extras in a movie, except for their modern clothes. (No sign of Marc Fleury or his party yet – they were just ordinary tourists.) And yet it was also very, very real. Solid stone basking in the sun. Shutters flung open. Flowers everywhere. Shops selling bits and pieces. And in the very