Another collective gasp.

‘Gigi!’

Bish was livid, but Bee was unperturbed by the name-calling. ‘She’s only trying to distract us by calling me that,’ she said. ‘She knows where they are, Bish.’

Georgette was horrified at the accusation. Bee was nodding with certainty. ‘The only person who calls anyone arseholes of biblical proportions is Violette,’ Bee said. ‘So where are you hiding her?’

Bish would have been sure Bee had it wrong if not for the look on Layla’s and Jocelyn’s faces. Stunned. Then furious. Not at Bee, but at Georgette.

The girl burst into tears. She had a delicate way of crying.

‘Gigi, cut the crocodile tears,’ her mother said.

‘Do you know where Violette is?’ Layla demanded. ‘Did she ring? Text? Email? Anything?’

When no one seemed to be buying Georgette’s tears, she stopped. ‘They only stayed a night,’ she said defensively. ‘I don’t know where they are now.’

There was a moment’s silence, then everyone was speaking at once.

‘Geeej!’

‘In our home?’

‘How could you not know you were hiding two runaways in your house?’ Bish asked Jocelyn, incredulous.

‘I don’t like your tone,’ Jocelyn said. ‘Don’t you dare judge me.’

‘Yeah,’ Georgette said. ‘Your daughter’s the one who smuggled them over the Channel.’

Nothing delicate about her now. Beirut Barbie was all attitude.

‘Bee was hardly in a position to smuggle anyone across the Channel,’ Bish said patiently, ‘because she didn’t drive herself over the Channel. I did and —’

He stared at his daughter, speechless. ‘Bee?’

She refused to look at him. Surely he hadn’t driven Violette LeBrac and Eddie Conlon onto the ferry? He thought back to that day, and Bee’s constant disappearances, her stalling at the campsite, the sobbing at Immigration.

There was a long, guilty, uncomfortable silence.

‘Where are they heading?’ he finally asked Georgette, hoping Bee didn’t think she was getting off scot-free.

‘I don’t know.’ She sent her mother a pitiful look. ‘I think she just wants to lie low so no one arrests her for something she didn’t do.’

In spite of himself Bish was impressed by how easily she’d steered the attention away from her own wrongdoing.

Jocelyn was teary. ‘They must be petrified.’

‘Another reason we need to get them off the streets.’

‘Jimmy’s the only person who can bring her in,’ Jocelyn said.

‘I disagree,’ he argued. ‘Violette had her chance to stay with him in Calais. I don’t think she trusts her uncle.’

He saw Jocelyn’s fury. ‘Do you not understand what’s happened to that family, Chief Inspector Ortley? When Jimmy got out of prison his mother begged him to take his uncle to Alexandria, because there was no way Joseph Sarraf was returning to Manchester. Although Jimmy couldn’t bear the idea of leaving her in that hospice alone, he went because he thought he’d be back within the week. But he was flying on a French passport and they wouldn’t let him back into this country. His mother died alone. He can’t see his sister. He can’t see his niece because the Australian government won’t give him a visa. Family is everything to the Sarrafs. It’s everything to Violette and she will do anything to protect them. She might not want to get Jimmy involved, but you need him. He knows the truth.’