But the longer they stay in the Pyrénées-Orientales, the greater the danger that one day they will be spotted by someone they know. For all Rat knows, Vanessa’s already called Mémé Catherine to check up on them. And if she finds out they’re just plain missing, who knows what she might not do to find them?

You need to call Vanessa to let her know you’re both okay, Rat tells herself, but she’s still too angry to call. What they really need to do is get to England. She wonders whether her father has finally answered. It feels like months since she e-mailed him. Out of the sixty euros they started with, they have a little less than thirty-eight left. Not much. Better get going, and skip the harvest. Better try to hitch to London.

But Thierry’s scumminess has shaken Rat. A few weeks ago, she would simply have headed for the nearest highway, stuck out her thumb and hopped into any car that stopped. Now she finds herself wondering, What if we get picked up by another child molester? How will I be able to protect Morgan this time? She loathes Thierry even worse for making her think about these things, for having undermined her blithe assumption that other people were basically well-intentioned.

The world looks uglier, more menacing than it did when she was younger. You can’t just assume your innocence will keep you safe.

Morgan’s known this all his life. Now she too is having to catch on.

Chapter 4

“You are such a prat,” says Kate.

Her face has gone bright red, and she’s trying to laugh, but Gillem can see she’s fighting back tears. “Why did you never tell me? That’s what I can’t understand.”

“I never think about it,” he admits. “It was such an abysmal period in my life, I did so many shameful things. I find it very hard to think about.”

“This daughter of yours exists, she’s been growing up, she’s—she’s a teenager. You’ve never thought about her? That’s pathological. Not even at the back of your—you are so closed, you don’t even know what you’re thinking. That’s serial-killer mentality.”

“Why serial killer? Women give babies up for adoption all the time.” Not very long ago, the home secretary’s wife had been confronted with the son whom she had given up for adoption forty years ago. “Do you think Pauline Prescott allowed herself to—”

“When I miscarried all those times, when Artemio was finally born, didn’t you think—”

“No.” Gillem’s lying. In fact, he’d thought Kate’s miscarriages were divine punishment for the child he’d abandoned, but that’s just the kind of sick bastard he is.

“You didn’t think of how it might have been for this woman, going through pregnancy, giving birth all by herself, with no husband? She must have been young.”