CHAPTER SEVENThey set off the following morning with Amandine, who had been soaked overnight in a bucket of disinfectant, lashed to the flagpole to dry out, and her owner curled up in her sleeping bag in the cabin, turned away from her grandfather, staring into nothingness.
The evening before they had washed their clothes and their bedding and themselves, hosing down the deck and lockers just for good measure and now, as they crept back onto the Seine at a sober pace, Colin’s nostrils were full of the ferrous smell of river water and the faint whiff of Gauloises that was always in the air.
The child was holding her grey tweed hat in both hands, pressing it to her mouth, breathing in and out through the material. Her hair strayed over the pillow in brittle curls. Wordlessly, she’d decline
