She fell asleep immediately and slept deeply and woke at seven with her fists clenched. Dan’s hand was lying over hers. She left him sleeping, got up and dressed, and her phone rang as she came down, as if Griff sensed she was up. He was on his morning walk. He had spoken to his lawyer and closest associate, Arun Karnad. The name made the past close, present again, all of her childhood, the inside of the house on Holford Road, and Arun, coming by to see Griff.

‘Why do we need Arun?’ said Bea.

‘You aren’t getting anywhere, are you?’ said Griff.

After they spoke Dan came downstairs rubbing his eyes.

‘He says his lawyer is going to find some people in London to shift things along,’ she told him.

‘That’s good,’ said Dan. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes.’

They ate breakfast.

‘Are you all right?’ he said again.

‘You keep asking,’ said Bea.

‘I keep wanting to know.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘It’s a lot to deal with.’

‘I know. I’m dealing with it.’

‘You need some time, Bea.’

‘For what? I don’t understand why the hospital haven’t called. Why hasn’t anyone been in touch?’

Her phone rang again. She stood up to answer it. It was her brother, Ed.

‘Ed. Are you still in Tokyo?’

‘Yup, I’m in the office. Is Mum all right?’ he asked.

Ed was the only one of the three of them who could say Mum and Dad naturally. Not cursed with sensitivity he considered himself above the mass of humanity, who suffered and worried about things they couldn’t influence.

‘She’s very distressed,’ said Bea.

His voice, six thousand miles away, was crisp as a City shirt. ‘I could kill Alex,’ he said ‘Ironic, eh? After everything he’s put Mum and Dad through already.’

It wouldn’t have been kind to talk about what they had put Alex through.

‘Handed everything on a plate,’ said Ed, ‘threw it all away.’

‘It was an accident, Ed,’ said Bea. ‘We don’t know the details yet.’

‘I meant his life. His whole life. Oh Christ, do you think the papers will get hold of it?’

‘I don’t see why they would.’

‘You know what they’re like. They keep files.’

He shouted a couple of times and cried once. At the end of their conversation he said, ‘See you at the funeral. Whenever that is. Bloody French.’

‘Goodbye, Ed.’

He put down the phone and so did she. She pictured the cuts his words had made closing up, leaving her clean and unmarked. He hadn’t meant to hurt, he hadn’t been thinking about her.

At lunchtime the new VW Golf arrived with a full tank of petrol, and the old Peugeot was removed, as if it had never been.