Her shoes were patent leather. It seemed odd to meet the family of someone who had died wearing beige patent leather high heels. Bea supposed she hadn’t known, getting dressed, what would happen at work. Neither Blanchard nor she looked any of them directly in the eye. They were set apart by crisis.

‘After you,’ said Hélène Guerin when the lift doors opened. They followed her along a corridor. Griff and Liv were ushered away through an electronic door, and disappeared.

Bea and Dan waited in the low-ceilinged corridor on bright blue plastic chairs, bolted to the floor. Hélène Guerin came back through the electronic doors and sat next to them. She offered them water. When she checked her phone, she did it turned slightly away, out of respect.

‘It’s all right,’ said Bea, ‘we don’t mind. You must be very busy.’

They sat in silence, still holding hands, with the sound of the circulation of the building beating like life support around them.

‘Are you sure you don’t want a coffee?’ said Dan.

‘No thanks,’ said Bea.

When Griff and Liv came back they were transformed. Liv was smaller, and weakened. It was as if her insides had been removed and altered, even her clothes didn’t sit the same way on her body. At her side, Griff had never looked so powerful, like a man in battle. Liv put both hands over her face. Stumbling, she went towards the desk, where a man was on the phone, but Griff took her arm, and led her away.

‘I can’t stand it,’ she said. ‘I want to die.’ Her face caved in like melted wax.

Compassion rose in Bea, warm as blood, nauseating.

‘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.’