In the corridor, the officer waits for me. It’s busy out here, the hum of voices increases as we move away from the Ladies, and I see people milling about the desk – some in uniform, some civilians. There’s a bench against the wall lined with people, all of them waiting, and as we reach the interview room, a woman turns her head and looks over at me, and I realize that I know her. It is Siobhan Harte – Sasha’s mother. What on earth is she doing here? But then I think, oh. Yes, of course. And I suddenly feel afraid. Are there other parents here from the school? The way she is looking at me, the hard varnish of her stare.

‘All set?’ the officer asks, opening the door for me.

I take one last look at Siobhan. She sits up straighter on the bench, lengthening her neck and fixing me with a look that contains neither pity nor hatred. Rather it is a look of vindication. And it all comes tumbling back – our conversation, her assertion, the descriptor she’d used, pinning my daughter with a word.

‘There,’ it seems to say, her cool, arch gaze. ‘Didn’t I warn you? Didn’t I tell you so?’

14

‘Slow down,’ Abi told Mark.

Her eyes flicked towards the speedometer of the unfamiliar dashboard. They had picked up the rental car at the airport. The traffic leaving Bordeaux had been murder and now Mark was looking to make up for lost time, fields of sunflowers and crops whizzing past, heat shimmering above the tarmac.

‘I’m not speeding,’ he said.

‘You don’t know the roads.’

He let out a short bark of a laugh. ‘It’s a motorway, Abi, not some winding country lane.’

‘What if you miss the turn-off?’

‘We’ve got the Satnav,’ he said tersely.

In the backseat, Eva let out a loud sigh of irritation, catching Abi’s attention. Wan and tired after her exams, she’d hardly spoken to either of her parents throughout the journey from the airport. Abi watched now as her daughter put her earbuds in, zoning out of the situation in the car.

Mark glanced at her. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine,’ Abi answered, her voice strained with insistence.

‘You seem tense. Is there something wrong?’

‘Just tired,’ she said in a way that communicated her desire to let the matter drop.

Tension crawled beneath the surface of her skin. Impatience to get to their destination married with an anxiety she’d been carrying since the incident in Tesco’s the day before.

She had been hurrying around the aisles, looking for a few holiday essentials, when she’d turned a corner and found herself face-to-face with Siobhan Harte. For a few minutes, they’d chatted about school, the holidays, the French exchange programme, Abi explaining how Beth had remained in France even though her classmates had returned.