Violette was fighting back tears. He saw the tremble of her mouth.

‘They’re saying it was me, Jimmy.’

His blood ran cold just to hear the words. He would take her as far from this place as possible, where no one could find them. He’d kill anyone who tried to stop him.

Beyond Violette, the kid was hitting one of the boxing bags.

‘Stop doing that,’ Jamal told him. He didn’t like strangers in his life. Violette, he knew, was the same. She was a tough kid because she had to be. It was rare she spoke of friends and he wondered what had made her decide to let someone tag along.

‘If you were near here all this time, Violette, why didn’t you come to me?’

‘As if I wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘It’s just that I had a plan and it was a good one.’

The boy was still whacking the bag. ‘Tell him to stop, Violette,’ Jamal said, seeing the boy wouldn’t listen to him.

‘They’re saying Mac’s dead,’ the boy called out, and Jamal realised he was speaking to him. ‘Is that true? And Michael from Hastings and one of the Spanish girls. They’re saying she got a piece of glass right through her throat. And now they’re saying Serge the bus driver’s dead and there are heaps in hospital. With legs gone, and arms. That’s what they’re saying.’

Whack. Whack. Whack. The kid grunted as he pounded into the bag.

Violette grimaced, shooting Jamal a warning look. ‘We used to talk to the bus driver all the time. But I told him,’ she said quietly, indicating the kid, ‘I told him that just because Facebook says people are dead, it doesn’t mean they are.’

Jamal didn’t know how to break it to them. He’d read it in the news online. The bus driver and a young British girl had died overnight in the Boulogne hospital.

Violette could see the truth in his eyes. She made a pained sound, drowned out by the whack of the boy’s punching. His grunts were sobs now.

‘One of the chaperones told everyone who I was,’ Violette said. ‘Who Mummy was – and it’s going to be in the papers and everyone’s going to know. Everyone.’ She looked back at the kid, anger and then anguish in her eyes.

‘Tell the boy to go back to the campsite,’ Jamal said. ‘I’ll pack us some stuff and we’ll head down south.’

She shook her head. ‘I need to go because they’ll come here first. Don’t worry, we’ve got money.’ She patted the waist of her jeans, at what he presumed was a money belt. She’d started to sweat and was trembling again, and it broke him to see someone as tough as she was look so vulnerable. He brought her a glass of water and a wet towel to cool down her face.

‘You’re not making sense, Violette,’ he murmured. ‘You’re not going anywhere. We’ll ring Nasrene and Christophe and work out what to do.’