The cafe on the screen emerged from a recent memory. A cup and saucer and cinnamon sticks with the coffee. Fancy little biscuits. An evening spent in the fading heat of a day not more than three months ago. The next morning, hugs and kisses and a promise that they’d catch up soon. A flight back to the UK, Silva staring through the aircraft window as Europe glided below, wondering what it would have been like had her parents led normal lives. Had their wanderlust rubbed off? Was that why she never felt settled?

The camera moved to the right. Three body bags lay at the front of an office block where a plate glass window had crazed into a spiderweb pattern. Next to the window stood several police officers, sub-machine guns cradled in their arms. The news ticker at the bottom of the screen scrolled to the left. The head of a British women’s aid charity had been assassinated in an attack on a cafe in Tunis. Other expats and tourists had also been targeted. Seventeen people injured, at least seven fatalities. The raindrop ran from Silva’s neck down to her chest and she shivered. She’d been to the cafe, she was sure of it. Then her phone rang and she was stepping away from the crowd, out into the street and the rain. She pulled the phone from her bag and saw the caller. He never rang her, not at work. In fact he never rang her at all. She realised her hand was shaking as she moved the phone to her ear.

‘Dad?’ she said.

‘It’s your mother.’ The voice hesitated, stumbled over words, muttered a series of broken phrases. Although good at barking orders, dealing with emotion had never been her father’s strong point. ‘She’s… well, she’s dead.’

‘I know,’ Silva said.