Griff stood up and looked down at his daughter on her knees. ‘Whatever. If you change your mind, tell the guy on the desk. I’m sure they can find you something. I’ll put you in a taxi. I may as well have my walk now.’

They got into their cab, and he waved them away. Bea turned to see him heading off across the lawn, his long shadow thrown back, up the floodlit facade, fifty feet high.

‘We’ll pay him back,’ said Bea.

‘For what?’

‘The cab.’

She was staring at the blurred shapes passing the window, eyes flicking in and out of focus. Shock, he thought, there should be more than one word for it. Like all those words for snow in whatever language it was. Hard, ice-like shock. Soft, muffling shock. Brittle, breakable shock. His mind wandered as they turned off the fast road. He was not in shock. Hauled in by the gendarmes and now here he was, after a nice steak dinner, fine. Once, years before, a police van pulled up in front of him on Consort Road. He had been on his way to meet Troy, at the Bussey. They dragged him off the pavement, into the van, and then a cell. He was fourteen at the time. It terrified him so badly he’d cried in front of them, not knowing how far it would go, or what they suspected him of, if anything, and because his mother wouldn’t know where he was. His life might have been far from the cliché Griff imagined, but he had every reason to fear the police. And yet, he’d spent half the day in a high-security barracks in the whitest town in the world and not really been bothered. It hadn’t touched him. He began to wonder at it, and then realised; it was because he had known Griff was there.

‘My father never believed in Alex,’ said Bea. ‘He didn’t help him. Now he’s in so much pain.’

Dan tried to care for Alex’s memory, or that Griff had failed him.

‘So is your mum. Maybe you could be a bit nicer to her.’

She sat up suddenly, so suddenly the driver swerved, checking his mirror.

‘It’s not your family,’ she said furiously. ‘I’m not interested in being nice to her.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He repressed his outrage at being spoken to like that.

She sat back. ‘No. I’m sorry.’

They drove up to the hotel, the weeds and stones of the driveway looked very sharp in the headlights. She paid the cab with money Griff had pressed into her hand, and they let themselves in.

‘Home sweet home,’ said Dan. The air did smell sweet, and damp.

‘We left the back doors open,’ she said, feeling the night breeze flowing through the hotel like a river. ‘I thought we closed them.’