‘Why don’t you meet me someplace?’ Jimmy asks when he rings one night, just to hear their voices. ‘Maybe Australia?’ Because it was Da who once showed him the images of the red earth there.

Da doesn’t say much, just mumbles a ‘maybe’.

So Jimmy makes a detour and walks down Brackenham Street to St Christopher’s on the corner. He’ll light a candle and make a vow. He’s going to find a way to get Da’s passport stamped. If it’s the last thing he ever does.

Bish dreamt of his son again. It was what woke him. Not that he needed to pinpoint the reason these days. Three am had become his witching hour, and the fears that revealed themselves made him shudder at the thought of all his future three am’s – of what they might produce. Shaking him awake and reminding him of loss and longing and mortality.

He woke again hours later, dragging himself out of bed to the sameness that he’d become used to this past week. A blinding headache. A flat that looked like a university dorm: laundry piled high and a week’s worth of glasses fighting for space on his bedside table. A dead goldfish. That was becoming a ritual now. Another day, another dead fish.

At the front door he collected his post and sat at the breakfast bar sorting it into bills, junk and letters, marvelling at how considerate his postman was, bundling together a deficit to his bank account of five hundred quid in one neat package. Phone bill. Gas bill. Energy bill. Then he came across handwriting. A postcard from Bee: You said to send you a line from Normandy. That was it. No Dear Dad or Miss you heaps. As someone used to spending his days dealing with the scum of the earth, Bish Ortley found no species crueller than the adolescent female. He stared at the cursive, wondering how long he had been waiting for something handwritten, evidence that someone out there had taken the time to reveal the wonders of the world to him.

When his phone interrupted his hangover-induced musings, Bish saw the name of his old boarding school mate. They’d met up only sporadically over the years, usually on Elliot’s initiative. Last Bish knew, he was working for British Rail.

‘Tried you at work but you weren’t there, Ortley.’

Bish wasn’t in the mood for explaining that.

‘Listen . . . things are sketchy, but I thought you needed to know,’ Elliot said. ‘One of the communications people here has picked up talk of a bombing. At a campsite between Calais and Boulogne-sur-Mer. They’re suggesting it could be a busload of British kids on a tour of Normandy. Bumped into your mother last weekend and she mentioned Bee —’

Bish hung up. Heart thumping, pressing Bee’s number with a shaking finger, waiting. Heard the ring first, then her voice.

Obviously not here. Or obviously avoiding you. Pick the reason. Leave a message.