Fuck it, he was going to have to speak to David Maynard about getting all the kids of the tour together again. It was the sort of thing the principal extraordinaire was good at.

His phone beeped with a text from Saffron telling him to look at Sadia and Katherine’s blog. ‘Who’s got internet access?’ he asked.

Everyone. They hadn’t managed to grab a spare set of clothes or shoes but they all had their technology.

‘You two look up your mums’ blog,’ he ordered Lola and Manoshi. Lola had it on her favourites page so was first to find it.

‘Your dad wrote a piece, Eddie,’ she said.

A surprised Eddie reached over and took the iPad. Bish watched him study the screen.

‘Eddie? Are you okay?’

Eddie nodded.

‘What does it say?’ Fionn asked.

Eddie swallowed and started reading. ‘“My eldest son Jimmy was killed in the Brackenham bombing when he was eighteen. It was how my wife Anna came to meet Noor LeBrac. A need to understand why our boy had died. My wife’s relationship with Noor introduced us to our second son who means everything to me . . .” ’

Eddie started crying and Violette leaned over and gently took the iPad out of his hands and continued to read. When she cried, Bee took over, and by the end everyone had read it aloud and Bish felt like crying himself.

An air of tranquillity had hit the bus by the time they reached Yorkshire. Bish welcomed the sensory overload of the landscape. Perhaps days without alcohol had opened him up to everything. Drystone walls lined with flowers, the fluorescent fields of rapeseed. It was functional beauty. Cottages advertised free-range eggs, black-faced sheep dotted the hillsides, farmers collected silage for the winter. A cyclist or two and seasoned walkers with sticks signalled that the cove was close by. Violette was alone in finding it too picture-perfect. Her farm in Coleambally, she said, was a different sort of beauty. More savage.

Bish heard the homesickness in her voice. But he didn’t want to think of Eddie and Violette being separated. He didn’t want to think of any of these kids being apart – he wished he could drive them around the countryside for the rest of their lives, keeping them all safe and less lonely.

Ten miles out of Malham, Bish knew he had to let Grazier in on where they were. He was hoping they had at least a forty-minute head start and that Violette would get the chance to complete the journey she had begun all those weeks ago. So he took a chance and sent a text, and then sat back and enjoyed the rest of the drive.

They arrived in Malham just before two. After parking in the village, they secured Fionn in the wheelchair and set off to the cove, a mile down the road. Violette led them, glancing back more than once at the sound of voices in the distance.