Bee can’t help laughing.

‘Have you heard from your girlfriend?’ Violette asks with a nudge.

‘She’s not my girlfriend. It was just snogging.’

Violette rolls her eyes. ‘Seriously, Bee, don’t tell me you’re still sitting around waiting for her to make the next move?’

Bee had forgotten about the lisp thing. It disappears sometimes and then it’s there, reminding her that Violette can’t control everything.

‘My mother saw the photos from that last night in Calais,’ Bee says. ‘She said you and I are probably descendants of two sisters who lived in Mesopotamia thousands of years ago.’

Violette gives this some thought. ‘Yeah, that sounds right.’

Eddie reappears from the Tube station and his face makes Bee ache. Anyone who reminds her of her brother makes her ache, but she can’t say so to her mum or dad. All those mornings her mother wouldn’t get out of bed. She doesn’t want that happening now that the baby is coming.

‘You need to take him home, Violette,’ she says.

‘I can’t force him to go. Something happened there.’

‘Like domestic stuff?’

‘Like stuff here,’ she says, pointing to her heart.

‘So where are you heading?’

When Violette is silent Bee feels anger rising again. ‘You won’t tell me because you’re scared I’ll tell my dad! But it’s okay to trust Cosette the poser.’

‘Georgette,’ Violette corrects, and then she laughs and Bee is laughing again herself.

‘I won’t tell you because I know you’ll keep it from your dad and I think that will hurt him. I would never keep anything from my dad if he was alive.’

Bee wants to say that’s because Violette’s father didn’t live long enough to disappoint her. Although throwing himself off a rock and leaving Violette there alone was a pretty shit thing to do. Bee would never forgive her dad if he did something like that.

‘Is he someone we should be worried about?’ Violette asks. ‘I only met him for a moment but he looked like he was good at his job.’

Bee sighs. ‘He’s been drinking up a storm this year and the Met suspended him a couple of weeks ago. Now he’s got nothing better to do than visit blown-up kids in hospital and search for terrorists.’

They watch Eddie as he waits to cross the road. Bee can sense Violette looking at her, and turns.

‘He’s my brother,’ Violette says softly.

‘Who, Eddie?’

Violette nods. ‘And that’s the biggest secret I’ve ever told anyone outside the people who already knew, so don’t accuse me of not trusting you again.’

Bee can’t help thinking what an idiot she is. Idiot. Eddie crosses the road and a cab misses him by an inch. How bloody obvious is it that he and Violette are related? She reaches out and takes Violette’s hand.

‘I’ve just got two more things to do, okay?’ Violette says. ‘And then I’ll take him home.’ After a moment she asks, ‘Does your dad think I did it?’

‘No. I told him that if you were going to put a bomb on the bus, you’d have chosen Charlie Crombie’s seat up the back. My dad’s beginning to understand why.’