And then there was Marianne. Her dad had shot dead the son of a local crim and was taking it bad, regardless of the fact that the guy was scum in the making. She said it wasn’t like the movies; police didn’t kill people every day.

Violette said very little. Just that her father was dead and she lived with her grandparents. Charlie asked where her mother was, and at least she was honest about that. ‘In jail.’ They spoke briefly about the kids on the tour who got on their nerves. They compared bus drivers: both cranky most of the time. Violette told them she’d had words with the driver of the French bus. He was a bit of a stickybeak, she said.

Later, they came across a party on the beach in Arromanches and danced. As if no one they loved had ever died, or killed anyone, or cheated, or shamed them. It was the most uninhibited Bee had ever been. Her arms around Violette and Marianne, laughing up at the stars. Crombie made them all promise they’d never tell anyone that he had danced to One Direction. But the very best part was later, lying beside Marianne on the sand. And her kiss. And her fingers and her tongue and the way they shook in each other’s arms and the way they didn’t really speak the same language but understood exactly what the other was saying.

That was what happened the night before the bomb went off.

Bee’s father and Capitaine Attal and Dupont are staring at her in disbelief.

‘Stickybeak?’ Dupont asks. ‘Qu’est-ce que ça veut dire?’

There’s a discussion about what it means. ‘Nosy,’ Bee explains to her father, because now she has to be a translator for Australian English as well. ‘He was prying.’

‘That’s it? You went for a joyride in a car?’ her dad asks, not really caring what stickybeak means.

‘C’est tout?’ the capitaine asks.

‘That’s all,’ Bee says with a shrug, because in the end it’s all she decides to tell them.

‘C’est tout,’ Marianne says.

The one good thing to come out of the bombing, Bee thinks, is how everything fades in comparison. She would never have guessed that Marianne’s father and her own could be so relieved to hear that their children are car thieves and not terror suspects.

She stands up and says that if they need more information they can contact her on her mobile. Marianne does the same. They’re both giving their numbers but their fathers are being dicks and shouting above them. Bee can’t hear the last couple of Marianne’s digits over the din the men are making.

‘You contact me,’ Bish is telling Dupont. ‘Not my daughter. If you want to speak to anyone, speak to me.’

Capitaine Attal says much the same with a lot of French swear words thrown in. Dupont ignores them. As if French Intelligence don’t already have everyone’s phone number.

Back in the car, Bee and her dad put on their seatbelts in silence. Then he turns and stares at her, as if he can’t believe what he’s thinking.