‘All right?’ said Dan, seeing how still she was. He held her around the waist. She didn’t want to be like her mother. She stood up straighter.

‘Come this way, please,’ said Hélène Guerin. She took them back into the lift, and through the hospital, to where the gendarmes were waiting.

‘Now I want to see where it happened,’ said Griff. ‘Tell them, Bea.’

‘What?’

‘Tell them I want to see the place now. I want to see it.’

Bea asked, but nobody would take them.

‘Ask him what happens next,’ said Griff.

She asked, but Blanchard wasn’t sure. The hospital would be in touch, and the police. He advised them to speak to the British Consulate. Hélène Guerin had been assigned by the hospital to help them, but they couldn’t see her, she had gone.

‘Tell him I want to see the place,’ said Griff, again.

‘I’ve told him.’

He made her insist, and to her surprise Blanchard agreed. It seemed there was power in being the victims of a tragedy, nobody seemed to know exactly what to do with them.

‘He’ll take us later.’

‘Find us a hotel,’ said Griff. ‘I’m not waiting around here.’

‘A hotel?’

‘Nearby somewhere. Just find the best one and book it. Am I allowed my own car now?’

Blanchard stood under the concrete canopy and watched the family walk back to Griff’s red car, marooned in the enormous car park.

Dan googled a hotel as Griff drove, and Bea phoned and booked it. It was near the centre of town, white plaster and balconies and a well-planted square behind looped railings. Bea and Dan sat in the bar while Griff took Liv up. Bea lay down on the banquette in the hotel bar and slept, and Dan sat waiting for her to wake up, then ordered her a cup of tea. The tea came in a tall glass on a saucer, wobbling. His hands hovered over her while she drank.

Later in the afternoon her father came down.

‘Bea, come with me.’

She went to his side.

‘Dan,’ said Griff, ‘stay with Liv. The windows open all the way here. Not like in America.’

He handed Dan the key card. ‘Up you go.’

‘Bea?’ said Dan, then did as he was told.

The suite was on the first floor, at the corner of the building. He knocked on the door and said, ‘Liv? It’s Dan.’ When there was no answer he said, ‘I’m coming in, if that’s OK?’ and slipped the key card into the slot. The light flicked green and he opened the door.

The curtains were closed. He was in a vestibule and as his eyes adjusted he saw a sitting room with a sofa and a vast black television, like a black hole in the toile de Jouy wallpaper. Next to the television was a pair of open double doors to the bedroom, and, walking further into the room, he could see the bed and the shape of Liv’s body, the upper half covered by the folds of a silk bedspread, also patterned, like the wallpaper.