They walked back to the car. Griff was breathing quickly through his nose, his eyes invisible behind his sunglasses. He had taken a red handkerchief from his pocket and was wiping his fingers.

‘Come on, then,’ he said. ‘If we’re going.’

Blanchard had nothing more to say to him, he just shook his head and got into the car. Griff got in beside him. Bea looked over her shoulder at Alex’s crumpled car for the last time, then she got into the back seat, behind her father, and slammed the door.

‘Why did you do that?’ she said.

‘I had to,’ he said.

The car was filled with him. The air was him. She seemed to hear a roaring sound. Her vision blurred and blackened, like paper singeing round the edges. She closed her eyes and concentrated on light. She made a clean space for herself, and when she opened them again the air was back to normal.

Dan came down to the lobby when Bea and Griff got back, checking Bea’s face, anxiously. She looked shell-shocked, and very pale.

‘Sort out the bill, would you?’ said Griff and went upstairs.

Dan asked for it and the receptionist printed it out. When Griff came down with Liv he hardly glanced at it before tossing his credit card onto the leather blotter. Dan thought he saw an expression of surprise, a frown, but couldn’t be sure.

Bea thought how strange she and Dan must look next to her parents, as if they weren’t together. Her parents had no cheap clothes, and years and years of money made their age powerful, instead of weak. Next to them, she and Dan looked like they’d wandered in off the street – him unshaven, her hair not brushed. He took her hand. He smelled of toothpaste and sweat.

They drove back from Bourg-en-Bresse to Paligny. Bea, infantilised by shock, longed for some humane authority, rules to follow, but they were alone, with nobody to guide them through catastrophe.

On the autoroute, in Griff’s red car, hurtling. 160 kilometres an hour. Outside lane. Bearing down on slower cars. Griff demanded she make calls.

‘Find out what we need to do.’

Liv sat silently in the passenger seat, like she wasn’t there. It was good to have a purpose. Bea called the British Consulate in Lyons, was directed to Paris, then to Bordeaux, and then back to Lyons.

Stopping at the péage. Liv, fumbling with Griff’s credit card.

Bea called their administrator, Hélène Guerin, at the Hôpital Centre Fleyriat, but she wasn’t at her desk.

Stopping for petrol. Water. Liv taking painkillers.