Bea considered closing the door and leaving her, but she couldn’t do it. She went back inside. Arun and Griff were in the bedroom, and the doors were closed. Her mother held her hand out, and shuffled along the chaise. Reluctantly, Bea crossed the room, and sat with her.

‘Look,’ said Liv. ‘What I found.’

She picked up her laptop, clumsily, and touched the trackpad. Photos came up from the tool bar like a genie from a bottle. There was Alex’s face. Bea braced herself. It looked like life. It felt to her like life. The backlit screen was as bright as Liv could make it. She began to swipe. Alex’s different faces from different times looked out, uncurated, blurred and clear, caught in movement, unknowing, or smiling, careful sometimes, and deliberately cheerful, and at other times caught in secret, contemplative. She kept expecting to see his car, hanging in the still morning air, or his autopsy, that she had to keep not picturing. Her mother, weeping, sagged, and leaned her torso against Bea’s breast and ribs, flicking through the pictures, her finger tap-tapping through the photographs, sometimes so fast it was as if he were transforming from child to adult, and back to child. From teenager in black, to tall and tanned on his gap year, to a small, round-faced boy, then twenty-five, then five, then thirty. She thought of someone harming him. She saw his face split open. Liv stared and flicked through the pictures, murmuring words and little moans, indistinguishable cries and laughs.

‘Here. Look. And. See? Ah. See?’

Bea, with one arm around her mother, jammed her other hand over her own mouth. The pain came back, forks stabbing at her temples. She wouldn’t have been surprised if blood had trickled down her face.

‘Liv,’ she said, ‘put that down for a second, I need to talk to you.’

She took the laptop from her mother, and moved so that she could see her face.

‘The police told us something,’ she said. ‘Not very much, but you need to be prepared.’

Liv closed her eyes.

‘Are you ready?’

Liv didn’t speak. Bea was holding her shoulders, partly to be kind and partly to make sure she didn’t slump or fall.

‘Alex was murdered,’ said Bea. ‘They don’t know who, or why, that’s all they said.’

Liv didn’t react.

‘They’re saying that, now, for sure. Do you understand?’ said Bea.

Liv began to moan, and then to wail; as she raised her voice Griff came out of the bedroom.

‘I told her,’ said Bea.

Liv pulled away, and knelt on the ground, wailing and crying. Bea, unmoved, watched her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, pain stabbing her temples.

‘Liv. You should rest,’ said Griff.