‘I don’t want to find out you’ve been hanging around with him.’

The father resumed eating, and the rest of the meal passed without another word. After dessert, the dishes were cleared away and the tablecloth was wiped down according to a fixed routine in which everyone knew their role. Michel Bourdieu gathered up his travel documents, and the suitcase was lifted into the boot of the Citroën. Overhead, the sun briefly broke through the clouds, scattering the sea with glitter.

He drove down the road, slowing as he came to the last house. He considered knocking on the door, confronting Alan about the rumours going around about his son. Obviously the boy had seen nothing: it was all in his imagination; he was simply trying to garner the attention he didn’t get from his father. The man had clearly not taught his son to worship Christ and His saints, not to make a mockery of what was sacrosanct, not to talk about things he did not understand. Michel glanced at his watch: the matter would have to wait until he got back. So preoccupied was he by this single thought, as he drove up the hill, that he failed to notice the figures walking down the path on the far side of the dune.

There were other people gathered on the headland. The rumours had been spreading through the town since dawn: ‘Did you hear the latest?’ ‘She has appeared among us.’ ‘The boy’s not been right in the head since his mother died.’ ‘Have you ever heard such drivel?’ ‘Well, I think he’s telling the truth.’ ‘We should take some votive candles up there.’ People bowed over the statuette of the Virgin that Madenn had placed there the day before; they laid white roses, gardenias and sprigs of heather around it; they lit candles, cupped their hands to shelter them from the breeze. Some gazed at the rolling sky, as though perhaps they might catch a glimpse of something. Others stared at the house at the bottom of the hill, watching for the arrival of the boy whose name had been on everyone’s lips since daybreak.

‘Isaac.’

Alan said the name for a third time. Standing in the middle of the living room, he stared at his son who, despite his insistence, remained utterly silent. Alan had come home in the early afternoon and dragged the boy out of bed, where Isaac had naively hoped he could stay, forgotten. The shutters remained firmly closed; Alan had shut them the previous day, unable to comprehend what was happening outside, blockading his home against whatever lurked there.

‘What’s been going on out there these past two days? What is it you think is happening on the headland?’

The same questions, over and over for more than an hour now. The clock marked out the seconds with an old-fashioned tick-tock. Only a fragment of daylight managed to filter through the closed shutters into this accursed living room, where two shadows faced each other – one standing, gradually losing his patience; the other sitting on the sofa, mute, caught up in memories of the previous day.

‘Talk to me, Isaac!’

‘I see a woman.’

The teenager spoke softly, as though he could see the woman he was talking about even as he spoke, as though he needed to whisper out of respect for her. Alan wondered whether he had heard the boy correctly, if this whisper was really an answer; it was certainly not an explanation.

‘I was there. I didn’t see any woman.’

His son seemed untroubled by this detail; he looked serene as he sat on the sofa, patiently waiting for this interrogation to end. Something had changed in the boy, and Alan did not quite know whether it was his bearing, perhaps his voice, or his way of inhabiting silence without worrying about it.

‘Isaac, if you’re lying to me …’

‘I’m not lying.’

The doorbell rang. Annoyed by this interruption, Alan left the living room. He moved uncertainly, grumbling to himself. Once again, he had not slept during the night, and he had eaten very little: for the past two days, his routine had been turned upside down, and he still did not understand why.

On the threshold, he found Madenn, who had quickly wiped away the tears from her moist red eyes before the door opened. She no longer saw anything of the boy. Over the past few days, Isaac had stopped coming to the restaurant, had stopped coming to sit at the counter and have lunch with her. Of course, she had seen him on the headland, but there he was caught between worlds and barely able to speak, oblivious to everything around him. Now, the empty stool at the counter, the meals she did not serve him, this absence she had never anticipated, marked a break with happy times she was not sure would ever return.

‘I just wanted to ask how he’s doing.’

Standing in the doorway, Alan glanced around Madenn, suddenly mistrustful of the island and its inhabitants. Then he leaned towards her.

‘My son didn’t say that he saw … who you’re saying he saw.’

The comment amused Madenn, which somewhat alleviated her sadness. She pulled her cardigan tighter around her to ward off the cold.

‘He doesn’t need to tell us what he sees.’

Suddenly, her eyes lit up as she saw him coming to the door, this boy she had given up hope of seeing, this child she could not have loved more had he been her own flesh and blood. She opened her arms wide and hugged the frail body, thanking Heaven for not taking Isaac away completely, for leaving a little of him for her.

Dusk softened the light, revealing deeper, more tender shades; the particular hour when the sun blessed the coastline just before it set. Madenn and Isaac hurried off, huddled together, walking in step, and Alan watched them go, not knowing who was supporting whom, unable to prevent them leaving or to summon the strength to come between them. He stood outside his ramshackle house, and the light that filled the space seemed alien; the twilight was usually so familiar to him that he could tell the time simply by its tone, yet in that moment, there was nothing familiar about it.

In the distance, he saw other figures, a dozen or so, gathered on the promontory. They turned as Madenn and Isaac approached, reverently greeting a son who no longer felt like his own.

This evening, Hugo would be the last witness. He was setting up the telescope in his bedroom under the impatient eye of his sister who kept glancing at her watch, reminding him that the moon would soon rise, and they had to hurry. Downstairs, their mother was putting away the dishes. On the radio, the local news headlines. On the rare occasions when their father was away, the whole mood of the house changed, rediscovering a sense of calm that only seemed possible in his absence.

When the telescope had been adjusted, Julia hopped down from her brother’s bed.

‘Bring it into my room! I’ve got a view of the shore!’

She was filled with extraordinary energy, skipping down the corridor, momentarily forgetting her asthma; with her father absent, she recaptured something of the carefree spirit of childhood.

In her bedroom, she opened the window wide and breathed in the damp, briny scent she had loved from the first time she had smelled it. She leaned out and peered towards the shore, where a small crowd had gathered.

‘Hey, isn’t that your friend? The one Papa was talking about?’

It was Isaac; Hugo recognized him immediately. Far below, staring out to sea, Isaac stood motionless with bouquets of flowers at his feet, flickering candles forming a ring of stars around him. The crowd bearing witness, serious and solemn, were gazing at him as though his mere presence were amazing in itself. It was a curious scene, like a vigil that did not seem to be a vigil, an evening mass with no prayers, and Hugo watched, troubled by a bad feeling he did not understand. Beside him, his sister tugged at his sleeve: the moon was rising, perfectly round, casting a diaphanous reflection over the water. On the horizon, a tawny golden streak; the last vestige of the sun that had disappeared even as its counterpart ascended into the heavens – a cycle endlessly repeated, a reminder that on earth everything was a ritual.

Ignoring her brother, who was too preoccupied to hear what she was saying, Julia leaned further out of the window, transfixed by the spectral presence rising above the coast, just as Isaac was transfixed in that same moment, both of them witnesses to a sky that only they knew how to see.

Two coffees were set down on the table. Bundled up in their coats, the regulars hurried to take a first scalding sip. Outside the window, a fine drizzle fell over the old port; a typical February morning, silent and shrouded in mist, the ghostly streets deserted. The only available warmth was that of the cafe and the steaming coffees that they drank slowly.

A chill breeze whipped through the room: on the threshold a nun was holding the door wide open.

‘Do you have a phone?’

She sounded out of breath. She wore a long raincoat that fell to her narrow ankles, and the scarf around her neck glistened with tiny raindrops clinging to the wool. The owner, drying a glass, nodded towards the rear of the cafe. The nun let the door close and moved briskly between the tables, her wimple sliding back to reveal chestnut-brown hair. At the end of the counter, she spotted an alcove and in it an old wall-mounted telephone. She picked up the receiver and dialled the only number she knew by heart. Someone at the convent picked up.

‘Could I speak to Sister Rose, please? This is Sister Anne. Sister Anne Alice.’

She clung to the receiver with both hands as though fearing the whole place might crumble around her, just as everything had seemed to crumble around her over the past two days – the street suddenly heaving as she passed, like an earthquake beneath the town; her bed plunging into the waves in the middle of the night: ever since she had come back from the island, nothing had been stable.

‘Are you calling me because She has appeared?’

At the other end of the line, the cheerful, rasping voice; the same voice she had heard ever since her arrival, reminding her of the encounter that awaited her in this place.

‘There is a boy who claims he has seen her, Sister Rose. He lives on the little island, off the coast of Roscoff.’

‘I knew it would happen. Praise be to our Most Holy Mother.’

‘But you were mistaken, Sister Rose. And you are never mistaken.’

‘You just told me yourself that She has appeared?’

‘But not to me, to someone else!’

Sister Anne had raised her voice and could now feel eyes boring into the back of her neck: she suddenly became aware that she was not alone in this cafe, and her distress, not to mention her rage, were obvious to all. Her cheeks flushed purple. She was unaccustomed to such outbursts; she never gave in to intense emotion. Like all children who had experienced the unbridled excesses of a parent, she had made restraint her chief virtue.

She leaned against the wall in a clumsy attempt to hide this sudden weakness.

‘I was there … But I didn’t see her, Sister Rose, I saw nothing.’

On the other end of the line, Sister Rose was silent as she began to grasp the extent of her companion’s anguish, and the misunderstanding that had clearly haunted her for weeks. She had not intended to mislead Sister Anne that morning in the hallway. She had simply wanted to tell her about her dream, to confide in someone she had watched grow up and in whom she placed her trust. She had forgotten that Sister Anne had been praying to the Virgin Mary since she was thirteen, that she had been in awe of the grace bestowed upon Saint Catherine Labouré, that she had spent her whole life waiting for her own encounter with the Blessed Mother. How could she have been so thoughtless as not to realize that Sister Anne would hear only what she so devoutly desired?