‘Would you bring up some champagne, please?’ said Dan. He didn’t know why he said it, it just came out.

‘Certainly, sir,’ said the manager. ‘I am very sorry, we didn’t know.’

‘Forget it.’

‘My mistake. The maid.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Dan.

He went back into the suite, and shut the door on him.

When the champagne arrived, he jumped up and closed the gap in the bedroom doors, hastily clearing a space on the table. He overtipped the waiter, and shut him out as fast as he could, then sat there, staring at the dripping silver ice bucket, wondering how it would look to Griff or Bea that he had ordered champagne when Alex had just died, and his mother was prostrate with grief in the room next door. He opened the bottle, deadening the sound with a linen napkin, and poured himself a glass and then he put his feet up on the yellow silk sofa. They had included a small bowl of cashew nuts, which was nice. If Liv came out, he could offer her some.

10

10

Blanchard drove Griff and Bea to the place, forty minutes away. Bea sat next to Griff in the back of the car. He had his sunglasses on and he wasn’t saying anything. Now he had his way he stopped giving instructions. The foreign landscape slipped by, and civilian traffic made way to let them pass. Then there were almost no other cars, just farmland. Blanchard was silent, like her father. She couldn’t remember what time it was. In her confusion she couldn’t separate all the questions she had, and she looked out at the flat fields and the silence grew heavier and heavier. There was nothing to be said. She would see where it had happened. That was all there was, and dread. They were following in Alex’s steps. It had to be done. Seeing where. She took her father’s hand.

‘I understand,’ she said.

He ignored her. She took her hand away. Outside the car, on either side, the farmland was criss-crossed with thin bone-coloured roads. She had never been there but it was familiar, the white road of her nightmare.

‘It’s from the stone factory,’ said Blanchard, as if she’d asked. ‘It’s stone dust.’

‘Really?’ she said, as if she was interested. Ah, bon?, like a French phrase book. It was ridiculous of her. In the distance, an industrial-sized agricultural machine moved slowly, spraying something. She didn’t know what. She imagined the dust washing from the green leaves. She couldn’t picture Alex here. She didn’t know why he would have been.

‘What is this?’ said Griff. ‘What was he doing here?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

The car swung as Blanchard turned left, at a right angle, and stopped.

‘OK,’ he said. He got out of the car and opened the door for Griff. Bea got out on her own.