‘In a situation like this, when a death is sudden, or unexplained.’

Bea made notes as they talked. She didn’t remember Charlotte Pelham mentioning lawyers before. She wasn’t sure what she remembered. Her mind was not her normal mind. She thought she had been imagining it, about the make-up. It was Hélène Guerin who was unfeeling, not the vice consul. She corrected herself; nobody was unfeeling. She was oversensitive, because of what had happened. She couldn’t expect people to read her mind. She called the funeral director in London. It was an hour earlier there but even so, the phone went to message. Maybe he was at another funeral. She imagined him walking slowly behind a hearse, in a top hat with a crepe ribbon.

‘Hi, it’s Beatrice Adamson,’ she said, reassured by how cheerful she sounded. ‘Just to let you know, we don’t have a death certificate for Alex yet? There’s a bit of a hold-up here. I’ll give you another call in the morning. Thanks very much. Bye.’

She put the phone down. Grief came suddenly, like a kick to the chest. She leaned over the desk to breathe through pain that rolled through her. Her phone rang. Griff.

‘Griff.’ She was out of breath, like getting up after being knocked over. ‘I’ve spoken to Charlotte Pelham at the embassy. Sorry, the consulate. In Dijon.’ She explained what had been said, and the advice to get a lawyer.

‘What does she mean, “suspicious”?’ he said.

‘Not suspicious,’ said Bea, staring at her illegible notes. ‘She didn’t say that. She said unknown, or mysterious.’

He was checking into his hotel at Versailles; she heard footsteps on marble, his and her mother’s. He spoke to the bellboy and asked Bea for details, pressing her for facts she did not know yet.

‘I don’t know why we haven’t heard from the police,’ she said, pushed as far as she could go. ‘I’m telling you everything I know.’

As they got into bed, Dan tried to hug her. ‘I’m here for you,’ she heard him say.

She turned over to face him, across the pillow.

‘When I went with Griff, to see the place where the crash was, he climbed up onto the trailer with Alex’s car.’

‘What? He did what?’

‘He went under the police tape, and climbed up and held it. He sort of – he just hung on to it.’

‘Why?’

‘It was horrible. He just hugged it.’

She lay staring at his face, not seeing it, just the car hanging over the white road, smelling the inside of it and blood, as if it were she who had embraced the metal.

‘I’m here, Bea,’ he said, but she couldn’t answer.