‘I wasn’t there that day,’ Bish said. ‘Her mum and I were having a bit of time apart and she went to Portsmouth with Stevie and I took Bee to a race meet up north. Over the years everyone’s said the same thing to me. Coastguards, police, even Bee’s mum. That even if I’d been there I wouldn’t have been able to save him. It was a killer rip.’ Bish swallowed hard. ‘But a man did go in to save Stevie. Some random guy on the beach. And he died out there too. That’s what I can’t forgive myself for. Another man died trying to save my son.’

After a moment he said, ‘So I sort of do know how you feel, Charlie. Just don’t let it take you to dark places, because it’s a bugger to dig yourself out of that pit.’

Ten minutes later, Bish knew something was wrong. There hadn’t been talk in the back for some time and when he checked the mirror Fionn looked shattered.

‘Pull over, Charlie.’

When the van was parked by the side of the road, Bish unbuckled his seatbelt and turned around. ‘Fionn, are you okay?’

‘I’m fine.’ He was scrubbing tears from his eyes.

‘Whatever Violette wants you to do, forget about it,’ Bish said, eyeing her with a warning.

‘What did I do?’ she asked.

‘I’m just angry, okay,’ Fionn said. ‘I’m allowed to be angry.’

‘Course you are,’ Bish said.

‘And I can’t even fucking walk away when I’m angry!’ Fionn shouted.

Bish looked at the younger girls in the backseat, worried that Fionn’s mood would frighten them. But they only looked sad.

‘I told them about the other bus,’ Bee said. ‘How the bomb was meant for the French kids and not us.’

‘I love the way I get the blame for making him cry,’ Violette said.

‘I thought you were hassling him before,’ Bish admitted.

‘I’m just trying to convince him to go to his school dance with a hot girl so his dumb-bitch ex-best friend’s girlfriend will see what she’s missing.’

‘Dumb bitch is a terrible term, Violette,’ Bish said, discreetly pointing to the impressionable three at the back.

‘She broke his heart. If I ever meet her, I’ll punch her in the face.’

Fierce Violette was back.

‘There was this magician kid on the French bus,’ Fionn said. ‘Every time we were at the same campsite he’d do these tricks.’

‘Patric,’ Lola reminded everyone.

‘He’d be dead if the bomb had been on his bus,’ Fionn said. ‘He sat four seats from the front. So would Marianne. So would that girl with all those plaits. So would at least the next five rows. Because their bus was packed and ours wasn’t. I kept wondering why this happened to me, and now I know why and I’m angry, because I can’t regret it any more. Because if I do, all those kids would be dead. The boy with the magic tricks would be dead.’

Charlie started up the van and put on his indicator. For the next hour they talked about Michael Stanley and Astrid Copely and Mac and Serge Sagur and Lucia Ortez, whom they had never met but whose name they’d never forget. Bish had seen his first dead body at the age of twenty-five, six months into the job. These kids had experienced it far too young.