He gave it to her, sat down again, checked his phone, and put his feet up on the coffee table. Bea tried not to go over the things that Roche had told them. She didn’t want them in her mind. She tried to imagine Alex alive, but she couldn’t. She finished her brandy, and traced her finger along the pyramids of the cuts in the glass, watching the light in lines along the edges, tasting the brandy that had been in her mouth. The doorbell rang again.

‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Do you know how many parties I’ve hidden from, in this room?’

‘You love parties.’

‘Mostly.’

He got up and poured himself another drink, and some for her, too. Bea poured water from her water glass into her brandy.

‘Lightweight,’ said Griff. He sat put his glass down, and stared at his feet. ‘When were you born again?’

‘Nineteen-eighty-nine.’

‘Of course. Worst year of my life.’

She didn’t take it personally, he’d lost a lot of money that year.

‘Regret is the worst thing,’ he said. ‘Worse than anything. I hope you won’t have regrets, when you’re my age.’

They sat staring at the file on the table again. She seemed to see Griff looking down at Alex’s peaceful face when he was dead in the hospital in Bourg, not knowing his skull was crushed. She brought her mind back.

‘What are your regrets?’ she asked.

‘Oh, Christ, let me see … I should probably regret not being around more for you kids, but to be honest, I don’t, particularly. There’s a modern belief fathers should be, you know, pestering their kids with footballs, fuck knows, doing all that stuff. Was I that bad? To you?’

‘You turned up, you went away again. You were who you were.’

‘So why all this?’

‘All what?’

‘Darling, you do a very good impression of hating me.’

‘I don’t hate you,’ she said. ‘I just hate what you do, and what you stand for.’

He laughed, a sudden, huge laugh. She laughed, too.

‘Not as much as you did, apparently,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

He didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure he’d heard.

‘What’s the difference between guilt and shame?’ he asked.

‘I think guilt is about something you’ve done,’ she said. ‘Shame is for what you are.’

He thought about it. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Guilt is negotiable.’ He reviewed his past, the years descending on his face.

‘I do feel a bit guilty, probably,’ he said. ‘I regret causing your mother pain.’

‘Do you?’

‘Of course. We’ve never really been mates, Liv and I. Don’t know how much she likes me, frankly.’

‘Do you like her?’ she asked.

‘What a question.’

‘I don’t know how you could.’

He stared at her.