ECHOES
THE STORY SO FAR: Having returned to Provence for work, travel writer Liv Potter is retracing the steps of a much earlier visit, when she was 15 years old. As a violent storm breaks above her, Liv finds an elderly woman swimming in a lake surrounded by trees, and is shocked to discover it is the enigmatic artist Camille Laurent, who she once knew so well. Terrified they may both be struck by lightning, Liv drives her home and is reunited with Camille’s youngest daughter, Fifine. In 1985, Olivia is forming a close friendship with the sophisticated 16-year-old Fifine, who warns her of a strange man in the village who is watching women. Plotting to leave her warring parents and younger twin brothers, Olivia sneaks out at 2am with a suitcase, intending to move in with the Laurents. But, in the dead of night, she discovers she is not alone in the garden.
July 1985
Olivia froze. The noise behind her came from a few feet away – a scuffing as though something was being dragged towards the lane.
For one awful moment, she considered the prospect that one of her parents had finally been overcome by their animosity and killed the other.
The only feasible options were that it was an animal of some kind. Or, and this thought was the one that lodged in her head, it was him – the man Camille and
