‘What truth?’ Bish demanded.

‘Speak to him.’

‘You think I haven’t tried?’

‘Get him to trust you!’

Layla stood up. ‘Can we keep this down? I don’t want the neighbours to know everything about my life.’

‘And I don’t want the boys to know,’ Jocelyn reminded herself. ‘This thing with Violette has given them nightmares.’

‘The little one with the curly hair has got the moves like Jagger,’ Bee said. ‘He’s met Eddie Conlon for sure.’

Bish started the car. Couldn’t get his head around the reality that he’d driven Violette and Eddie across the Channel. How was he going to explain that to Elliot and Grazier? Beside him Bee was silent. She had the audacity to take out her iPad, as if she had every right in the world to switch off.

‘Where did they get out of the car?’ he asked. ‘On the ferry?’

No response.

‘You know they’re not safe, Bee,’ he said. ‘If you’d told me, I could have helped them. Does she have a plan or is she just on the run?’

‘I don’t know. She’s not much into confiding.’

‘But she confided in you.’

‘She asked a favour. “Can you get me across the Channel?” There was no detail other than that.’

‘So someone you’ve known for a week asks you to commit a felony and you agree?’ he asked in disbelief.

‘It was a gut reaction to say yes. It felt right.’

‘Just like that?’

‘I came out to her,’ Bee shouted. ‘So yes, I trusted her. Just like that!’

After a silent journey home, Bish parked outside his flat and neither of them got out of the car.

‘I don’t like the name-calling,’ he finally said. ‘With Gigi Shahbazi.’

‘I wasn’t being racist,’ Bee said. ‘She does look like a Middle-Eastern Barbie doll.’

Obviously no photoshopping for the Shahbazi women.

‘I don’t mean that, I mean the name-calling towards you.’

‘Maybe you just don’t like the fact that I am one,’ she said. ‘A dyke.’

‘But why would you think that, Bee?’

‘I heard you talking about it once with Mum. You said it was a phase I was going through. It made me feel like shit.’

‘When did I say that?’ he asked. ‘When you were twelve?’

‘Well, you haven’t brought it up since.’

‘It’s just . . . you’ve never mentioned it to me.’ A thought occurred to him. ‘Have you spoken about this to your mother, or the principal?’

‘Stop calling him that. He’s Rachel’s husband, Bish. Get used to it.’

‘Then stop calling me Bish! I’m your father. It’s the only frickin’ thing in this world that means anything to me.’

‘I can’t believe you said frickin’ and not fucking.’

‘Well, Bee,’ he said, imitating Jocelyn Shahbazi’s tone, ‘we don’t use language like that.’

Bee made a rude sound and somehow the tension in the car softened. He didn’t know how to ask the next question, but this was progress and he had to make the most of it.