Her mother grabbed the laptop and started to look at the pictures again. Griff touched Bea’s shoulder, a two-finger tap, like a signal. Bea got her mother up from the floor. ‘Take her in there,’ said Griff.

Liv went with her to the bedroom, hanging on to the laptop, but when they got to the bed she let it slide from her hands. She sobbed against Bea’s breast, and the laptop fell on its side, half closed, Alex’s face illuminating the keyboard. Her tears soaked and spread on Bea’s T-shirt. Bea’s head hurt so much her eyes were burning.

‘Try to sleep,’ she said.

She covered her with her pashmina, which was lying on the bed, then straightened the laptop, and put away the pictures, so Alex’s face, discarded, wouldn’t stare at nothing. She put the laptop on a table as she left the room.

‘Don’t leave me,’ said Liv.

Nothing was enough. Not if they all bled out for her. Griff was standing where Bea had left him, by the sofa, bleak and old and powerless. They looked at one another, but there was nothing to say.

Bea left the suite, and went downstairs, across the terrace, and, from there, down the steps into the garden. She needed nothingness to clear her mind. She could still feel her mother’s body. Chateau L’Orée des Vignes was the perfect place for nothingness. Fingerposts directed her to la piscine, in curly writing. Past an avenue of box hedges, brown with blight, across a rose garden and an arboretum, was a large circular swimming pool set into an unnatural-looking lawn. About forty white plastic sunloungers were ranked around the pool. It was like a waiting room between worlds. She would sit and wait for Dan to be released, and try not to think. Two waiters, carrying trays, crossed paths. A pair of middle-aged women, very darkly tanned, looked up as Bea approached; one said something to the other and they looked down at their magazines again.

‘Madame?’

The waiter looked Algerian or Moroccan. Bea ordered an iced coffee and put it on her father’s bill without a second thought. She pulled a bed into the shade, and sat down.