Rose Tremain says this novel is about ‘how people cope with the last third of their lives’. Accordingly, she has peopled it with two sets of siblings in their sixties. Audrun and Aramon Lunel live in the Cévennes mountain range in southern France. Aramon is adrift in alcoholic squalor in the old family farmhouse, while his sister lives in a flimsy bungalow nearby.

A bit further south, disillusioned London antiques dealer Anthony Verey has joined his expat sister to start a new life. Like so many wealthy foreigners, he is keen to buy a property just like the Lunel’s – land that used to be worked by the inhabitants, but now serves as a spectacular backdrop to the old stone buildings of the region. The unfortunate human tendency to trespass damagingly upon the lives of others comes to the fore as their worlds intersect.

Trespass is intended to be a psychological thriller and, whilst she sometimes appears to forget that, Tremain’s writing is often reminiscent of William Trevor or Barbara Vine at her best. She exposes the darkest recesses of family dynamics as her characters struggle to recognise their past, come to a reckoning, and perhaps even countenance the possibility of forgiveness.