1.4 "Victor"
Thirty-five years in the past, we bear witness to the story of the young child known as Victor. His family were murdered in what appears to have been a home invasion, and he tried to survive by hiding in the closet. One of the robbers however noticed him, but whispered to him to be quiet and then his partner might not notice him. But the other intruder heard his partner talking, and came in and shot Victor through the door.
Cut to present day, and the stabbed body of Miss Payet has been found by Julie, a murder investigation gets underway. Claire meanwhile has decided to take her husband's advice and move the family. As she agrees though Jerome is arrested in connection with the attack on Lucy Clarsen, much to the shock of his wife. Thomas watches Adele's house via the secret cameras he has installed, but is unaware that Simon is now staying in the attic, as he has none there. Simon wants Adele and Chloe to come with him back to the Helping Hand but she isn't sure. Lena awakes to find that the scar on her back has got much worse, and on her way down the stairs she collapses. She is taken to hospital.
When the police come to investigate the death of Miss Payet Victor is discovered in Julie's flat, when he is driven out of hiding by a recurrence of the nightmare of the attack on his family, and Laure tells her she could get in trouble for keeping him. Thomas is freaked to catch Adele making love to Simon on the CCTV, and tries to find out from the parish priest if he knows anything, but the priest will not reveal what he spoke to Adele about, being bound by his oath of confidentiality. Thomas is however now convinced that Simon is not just in Adele's mind, that he's real, and here. Back from the dead.
In hospital, Lena's wound is found to be a keloid, a mass of skin that forms when a wound is not properly healed. Lena tells the doctor that she fell against a chair in the pub some time ago and hurt her back, but he does not seem convinced, nor does her mother. Her father, meanwhile, is answering awkward questions at the police station. They remind him of the time, a year ago, when he brought his daughter to hospital, suffering from a back wound. The doctors reported it to the police as suspected child abuse, and now that his relationship with Lucy cannot be denied he is looking like a suspect in her attack.
On returning home Chloe, trying to investigate the sound in the attic her mother has told her is mice, finds one of the cameras and shows it to her mother. The game is up for Thomas. Adele is scandalised that her fiance should be spying on them, though he says he only did it to make sure she was okay. Laure arrives to take Victor to the Helping Hand while Social Services try to track down his parents. Chloe ascends the stairs into the attic and finds Simon there, so Adele tells him he is her father, and then goes along with the child's idea that he is an angel, as she knows her father is dead. Adele tells her she must tell nobody about him, especially Thomas.
Having found out from his police contacts why Jerome was taken to the police station, Pierre loses no time in communicating this distressing information to Claire, who is broken by the news. She orders her husband to leave. Simon is spotted by a patrol car but at the height of the pursuit there is a short citywide blackout and the police lose him. OnThomas's return to Adele's house he is confronted by her and she tells him she is leaving. Then he drops the bombshell that although they were told to tell her that Simon's death had been an accident, it wasn't. When she asks what was it he just looks troubled.
Lena discharges herself from hospital and in fury goes to the Lake Pub, where she tries to out Camille, who is calling herself Alice still and posing as Lena's cousin. Nobody of course will believe her that "Alice" is in fact her sister come back from the dead, and she runs out in tears, angry and frustrated. Thomas tells Laure that it appears Lucy Clarsen had psychic powers that only worked during sexual intercourse; she contacted the dead during sex. It would now seem that when Jerome met her this was what he was trying to do, contact the spirit of his dead daughter. Oddly, when Laure is then handed post-mortem results from Miss Payet's autopsy she sees a drawing Victor made, of the woman lying dead with her cats licking her blood. They then rule the death as a suicide...
On arriving at the Helping Hand Victor is shocked to find that Pierre is one of the robbers who murdered, or was involved in, the murder of his family three decades ago. At home, Chloe continues work on her drawing, which is a picture of Simon but now shows him blowing his brains out. This is odd, as up to now so far as we know she has not been told that her father killed himself. Lena, on the way back home, collapses in the underpass and is approached by Serge...
QUESTIONS?
How did Lena get that mark on her back? Did her father really beat her? And if so, why? And why then is she covering for him?
Again, did Victor kill or somehow cause Miss Payet to be killed? His drawings are damning evidence of this, for those who can see, and he was the last one to see her alive. Plus he had motive, were it but known: Payet was about to shop him to the police and have him taken away from Julie.
Can Pierre really be one of those responsible for the deaths of the boy's family --- and his own death --- thirty years ago? How will Victor deal with this revelation?
Will Adele leave with Simon, and what will happen to Thomas then? How does Chloe know that her father committed suicide, if indeed he did?
Could Lucy Clarsen really contact the dead, or was it just an act? If the former, what bearing will this have on those who have "come back"?
CONNECTIONS
We knew there was a link between Lucy and Jerome, but like everyone we just assumed it was for casual sex, especially given that he had split up with Claire and had not so far as anyone knew any girlfriend. Now it seems there may have been more to it. Perhaps he was trying to ascertain if his daughter was all right, even sacrificing his dignity and fidelity to his wife in her cause.
There's definitely some sort of connection too between Simon and Thomas. The idea now being floated is that it was suicide that took the young man on his wedding morning, but this has not been confirmed. Can it be that Thomas had more to do with Simon's death than has been so far told?
WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE
There seems to be a recurring motif of water running out. This is not too surprising, given that the village stands at the foot of a dam, and the water level has been dropping. We don't know what that points towards, but the significance has been ramped up a little in this episode. We see the workers worry about what will happen if the power station floods, and references are made to a previous time this may have happened. There's a secrecy about the problem with the water level, as if they're afraid something bad will happen if it becomes public knowledge. Also, twice in this episode we see convoys of trucks carrying water hurrying along the road, presumably towards the reservoir.
WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?
Another recurring theme in this series is one of resurrection, and its relation to religion. Camille in particular scorns Pierre's comparison of her return to that of Jesus, and Thomas asks the priest if it's possible that if one man could rise from the dead others could too, thinking of Simon. Pierre wants to see Camille's return as a miracle, and surely must think there is a great power and purpose behind that, but she just wants a normal life, one she is quite clearly not ever going to have a chance to have. Lena, too, has snarled to her father that people don't just come back from the dead, asking caustically if he thinks Camille is like Jesus? And yet, it would seem that the idea that their daughter would one day come back has been planted in her parents' head by Pierre, long before the event actually occurs. Can it be possible he has somehow had foreknowledge of this, some sort of vision? Or was he just talking metaphorically? Either way, he does not seem totally surprised to see the young girl standing in front of him when she should be lying in her coffin.