Stay with Me

The storm came in along the valley late on the Friday afternoon.

We saw it coming from a long way off, from the terrace: a grey-violet wall moving down the valley from Dinant, swallowing the cliffs of Tailfer one by one, with silent lightning inside it, like bulbs blowing in a sack. The air had turned heavy, yellow, still. The gulls were flying low over the water. In the greenhouses, the seasonal workers had drawn the shade screens and closed the vents, and Antoine had gone down to check the boilers twice in an hour.

The rain came all at once, at seven, with a sound like gravel tipped onto the glass. At a quarter past seven, a clap of thunder made the kitchen windows shake, and the lights went out.