He looked away from the old man’s face across the terrace, and, like a divine intervention, there was Bea. She was being trailed by the same waiter who’d escorted him. In her shapeless cotton skirt, T-shirt and flat shoes, she was markedly worse dressed than anybody else. She looked for him and their eyes met. They were the youngest people there. And the poorest. They were easy to spot. She smiled at him, and it felt as though she were taking his hand. She was an anchor chain, pulling him from the deep, the trail of humble crumbs that would take him home.

‘Hurrah,’ said Griff, ‘there’s St Bea. We can eat.’

Bea hadn’t seen her mother and the two lawyers sitting silently at the big table, she just saw Dan. He came towards her and she kissed him.

‘Still smelly?’ he said.

‘Not so much.’ They sat down next to each other, with Roche on her other side. ‘I hate him summoning us like this,’ she whispered, ‘it’s just medieval, and my mother is completely high.’

‘Poor lady,’ Dan whispered back. ‘Maybe being here will take everyone’s mind off things,’ he said. ‘It’s gorgeous.’

‘Maybe,’ said Bea, because he meant well. The hotel wasn’t gorgeous, it was probably a Relais & Châteaux. She imagined the upstairs; patterned carpets in the corridors. Pillow menus. Dan wasn’t to know it was trying to be something it wasn’t, like the recorded string quartet playing classical hits on a loop, and everybody staring at everyone else as if there were movie stars wandering about, instead of just retirees on wine tours. Their waiter came to the table and Bea smiled at him, to make up for her nasty thoughts.

He stood over Liv with his silver pen poised.

‘Liv?’ said Griff.

‘I’m not hungry,’ said Liv.

Bea felt hatred. She didn’t care about the pretentious hotel, or Griff using his money to swab the blood, it wasn’t those things that were making her like this, it was Liv. She turned away to focus on the terrace. Lavender in pots. Shoes. When that didn’t work, she looked up, and tried to find a moon.

‘Why are you doing this?’ said Liv, loudly, to Griff. She gestured wildly and the waiter had to step back to avoid her jerking hands.

‘What do you want me to do?’ snapped Griff. ‘I hate room service, it stinks up the place.’

People turned to look. He and Liv drew attention, a combination of personal power and money; one lent force to the other, the result was magnetism.

‘Why don’t you order, Liv?’

‘No.’ Liv’s reedy voice was a counterpoint. ‘You’re incredible. How can you?’

The waiter, caught between them, pretended to be deaf.

‘Roche!’ barked Griff. ‘What will you have?’

The waiter scuttled to Roche’s side, but Roche, who had been looking at the menu for half an hour, panicked.