‘You could have told me you were going,’ he said. ‘I would have taken you.’

‘I find that the best way to battle the demons, darling, is to get into a car and drive for hours.’

Bish understood demons. He wanted to ask about hers, but feared they involved Stevie’s death. So they spoke of Bee instead.

‘She just holds everything in,’ Bish said.

‘Well, she takes after you, and you take after my father,’ Saffron said.

He was surprised to hear the comparison, and took his eyes off the road for a moment. There was a wistful smile on his mother’s face. Bish was always fascinated by the snippets of information about her earlier life.

‘I still can’t understand how the Worthingtons got away with taking you from him.’

‘The same way most people get away with the wrong thing,’ she said. ‘Wealth. After our mother died, Aunt Margaret had us flown back to Kent for the holidays and we were never returned.’

‘Imagine being up against Great-Aunt Margaret in her prime,’ Bish said.

Saffron went quiet and Bish thought the conversation was over. He wanted to know more about their stolen history, and was relieved when she continued.

‘We hated our English names. Our parents named us Khalid and Safeyah. We may have looked like foreigners in Egypt, but we felt like strangers here. No one ever speaks of it but I know it killed my brother in the end.’

‘So you don’t think it was an accident?’ he asked. Carl Worthington had died before Bish was born. His uncle had been a big drinker, and one night his car went off a Cornwall road and into the sea.

‘Who knows?’ she said. ‘He was old enough to remember more than I ever could. Carl adored our parents and spoke of them often, reminding me of how happy we had been in Alexandria. A simple life, but Bashir Nasrallah was not a simple man. Just one of few words.’

‘And you never saw him again?’

‘No. I think my father tried once or twice to see us, but I can’t imagine Aunt Margaret making it easy for him. He remarried years later. That much she chose to share with us.’

Bish heard bitterness in her voice, but sadness in her sigh.

‘I went a bit silly after my brother died,’ she said. ‘Aunt Margaret told me often enough that my reputation was in tatters. I met your father and then you happened, when I was just about Bee’s age. I told him I was pregnant and he could have walked away, but he didn’t, so we fudged the dates and got married. No one dared talk about it.’

She turned to look at Bish. ‘I promised your father I wouldn’t do anything to affect his prospects with the Foreign Office. I owed him, in a way, and the expat lifestyle suited us. I think we made each other as happy as we possibly could.’

Made each other as happy as they possibly could? A marriage like that could be read in so many different ways.