‘Just ask,’ she says.

‘Did you give up martial arts for French classes on a Saturday morning?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Why not?’

She hears a message come through and fumbles for her phone.

Ton père est un idiot. Mxx

Yours is too, she texts back. Bxx

Bee has never been so grateful for idiot fathers.

They spent the night at a motel in Calais, close to the port. While Bee texted her life away, Bish borrowed her iPad and searched through media from thirteen years ago. If Ahmed Khateb had been living in North London in 2002, someone he knew could have been a victim of the Brackenham bombing. What did Violette mean by calling him a stickybeak? Had Khateb approached her because he’d worked out who she was? It wouldn’t have been easy linking a Zidane to the bombing, but perhaps a grief-stricken man knew every single detail there was to know about the family whose patriarch had been responsible for Brackenham.

He searched for names, statements from the injured, death notices, and anything else written about the bombing back then, and came across a front page of The Guardian showing photographs of the twenty-three victims. At one point in his police career, Bish had known the names of them all. Remembered their personal stories. A young mother and her five-year-old son on their way to school. A father of four who worked for the council. An eighteen-year-old lad who was the only child of a couple from Merseyside. Bish stared at the lad’s face. Eternally laughing, without a care in the world. His name caught Bish’s eye. A common name, so he should have put the thought aside, but he couldn’t help a Google search. And at a time when he thought there was no more room for surprises from Noor LeBrac, Bish discovered her biggest one.

When Eddie’s mum died his dad had stopped doing things around the house, like cooking and cleaning and getting the mail from the post office. Then he stopped getting out of bed.

That was how Eddie came across the letters. He ignored personal mail to his mum and just concentrated on counting out the money in the tin that paid for the bills. But this letter came from Holloway prison, and Eddie had never known anyone to get mail from someone in prison, so he opened it. It was from a woman named Noor. Most of it was about the babies born in the wing where she worked, but the last few sentences read:

It’s the anniversary of Etienne’s death, and Eddie’s birth, and the day I knew I’d never see Violette again. The worst time of the year for me. The pain never lessens. In actual fact it grows, and one day I’m frightened that it will consume me. Please write when you can, Anna. I worry that I haven’t heard from you.

Love, Noor