Cormac didn’t notice the woman either; he had meant to look around for someone who might be Lissa, but his phone had rung just as he was walking in. He recognized the number, grimaced, and picked up.

“Hi!” came the English-sounding voice. “Is that the lifesaver?”

Cormac frowned. “Larissa, hi.”

“Hi! Listen, darling, beautiful day, we’ve got lunch booked on the roof of Coq d’Argent. It’s beautiful and you’ll be able to save anyone that falls off it. See you there, yah?”

Cormac passed the door to the girl behind him, who took it with muted thanks and dived past the annoying man walking too slowly in a flowery shirt.

“I’m a bit busy today,” he said quite happily.

“Oh, don’t worry about that, darling, we’ll be there all afternoon. Ciao!”

But Cormac’s thoughts were still on a laughing girl with tumbling curls. Plus, he had realized to his slight annoyance that he was absolutely miles too early—bursting, truly, from turning up, too excited and over the top—and was contemplating going back out again to find another coffee, but then he’d have had far too much caffeine and that really wasn’t an ideal situation for meeting someone either, so he decided to go fill up his water bottle from somewhere and sit and stare out at the passing boats and, hopefully, calm the crap down before he ruined everything.

Chapter 62

“Are you ready?” Roisin asked. “You do know this is a murder trial?”

“Why isn’t it manslaughter?” said Lissa.

“Because we have evidence the defendant thought Kai was a gang member from a rival group, even though he wasn’t. It was mistaken identity, but we’re fairly clear it was deliberate. Kai was the youngest of his friends; he was only fifteen. They thought he was a runner. He wasn’t. The driver never meant to get caught, but he did mean to do it.”

Lissa thought again of the car speeding up. Speeding up. This was worse—not a hideous accident, but a deliberate attempt to extinguish a young life. The wrong life. It was almost unbearable.

Lissa took a deep breath and bent her head to the paper. The words swam in front of her eyes.

“. . . I saw the car swing round the corner and mount the curb . . .”

She saw the boy again, his phone glinting as it was thrown up and fell, thrown up and fell, spinning in the sunlight

“. . . and when I got to him . . .”

She remembered the trickle of blood dripping down from the side of his mouth; the shouts and yells of the rest of them chasing the car down; the cries and the shrieking of brakes and the drip drip drip of the blood.

Blindly panicking, unable to breathe, her heart trying to burst out of her chest, she stood up, leaving everything behind her, and ran out of the room.

Chapter 63