They walked to the Basilique Notre-Dame de Beaune.

‘I’ve seen better,’ said Dan. ‘But not in real life.’

There was nobody there but them. It was very quiet, and they felt quieter too, now they were inside. They let their eyes rest on the arches and carvings, and looked at the stories in the stained glass without trying to decipher them.

Bea went to an altar by a side table, and Dan walked around the perimeter. She put a two-euro coin in the box, and lit a candle for Alex. Pain shouldn’t define his life and death. It wasn’t fair it would be his memorial. Murder. And a garden full of people thinking about his trust fund. She stared into the small flame until it seemed almost solid, and was the only thing she could see. He wasn’t marked for a violent end. And he had been a baby once.

She closed her eyes and determinedly tried to build a good, real picture of him, but the bad things crowded it out. The smashed car, imagined blood, her mother touching him. Bea opposed them carefully. His wit, her memory answered, cleverness. But the good things were feeble. Addiction, her grief fought back, loneliness. She kept her eyes closed, and kept her focus on bringing him to mind. She forgot the fight. A sense of him came to her. She felt the intangible sweetness, unworldly and untouched, that was his soul. The rest was just covering. She didn’t open her eyes until there was only that, like sunlight, filling her head, nothing else.

Dan finished walking around the church and came back to her side. He had become used to seeing her battling, and pinkness creeping up her neck, as she fought with herself. He had grown accustomed to a sharp look in her, switching languages, managing grief, managing him. Now, as she opened her eyes, she smiled.

‘Better?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘Come see this –’

He led her round the church.

‘Dan, I’ve been thinking,’ said Bea. ‘I’ve been doing this all wrong.’

‘All what?’

‘My life. Money.’

‘How?’

‘I’ve been running away.’

‘From what?’

‘That money at Paligny is nothing.’

‘Bea, it isn’t nothing.’

‘To people like my father it’s nothing. The big money is just beamed around the world, like light. It’s only us normal people paying our taxes and wondering why there aren’t any hospital beds.’

‘Yeah, I know –’

‘Except I’m not normal, Dan. I am people like him, I have that money. Real money. You know how you said, when my father dies, I’ll have millions.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, you’re right.’

‘He won’t be feeling so generous now, will he?’

‘He’ll be angry. He might get investigated. He won’t be ruined. He won’t cut me out of his will.’