Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil(39)

“Get her to write down everything she saw. Tell her not to leave anything out. I’ll pass it on and we’ll keep her name out of it until we have no choice.”

“We just don’t want whoever’s responsible for the bomb knowing Greta saw anything. We’re really worried about her. How’s your daughter holding up?”

Bish heard a break in the man’s voice. He knew he couldn’t hang up now, so he chatted a while longer. He then sent a text to Grazier detailing the conversation, and one to Attal as well, even though Bish knew he wasn’t on the case anymore. Then Naomi Hill returned his missed call. Reggie’s mother had met Parker at the Boulogne hospital on that first day, before Reggie was discharged.

“Are you joking, Bish?” she said when he asked if she’d had further contact with Ian Parker. “Have you read what he says about young black people? It’s not just foreigners he goes after.” She added briskly, “Anything else?”

“Yes. Can you teach me how to use Instagram?”

It was an icebreaker. Naomi worked for an entertainment magazine so he figured she’d know.

“You need an account,” she said. “All your photos go public unless you set your account to private. Then only the people who follow you will be able to see them.”

So he had to continue begging people to be his friends online.

“Do you think I could follow Reggie’s account?” he asked.

Within an hour he had access to ten Instagram accounts. He pitied French intelligence, who had to go through eight busloads of teenage photography. Under any other circumstances Bish would take the time to despair the priorities of the young. Seven days in Normandy and hardly any landscapes or monuments. Who went to Mont-Saint-Michel and took selfies in the gift shop?

It was at lunchtime, when he was back on Facebook, that a gift was presented to him. Bish couldn’t help marveling at his ubiquitous mother. Absent throughout his teenage years, everywhere he turned in his middle age. Saffron had 134 Facebook friends. Katherine Barrett-Parker was the latest.



After a quick phone call, he went to pick up his mother and drove her down to Dover. Earlier that week she’d traveled to Boulogne to visit the injured kids, and had met both Katherine Barrett-Parker and Sadia Bagchi.

“You could have told me you were going,” he said. “I would have taken you.”

“I find that the best way to battle the demons, darling, is to get into a car and drive for hours.”

Bish understood demons. He had never heard his mother speak of hers. He wanted to ask about them, but feared they involved Stevie’s death. So they spoke of Bee instead.

“She just holds everything in,” Bish said.

“Well, she took after you, and you took after my father,” Saffron said.

His eyes left the road for a moment; he was surprised to hear the comparison. There was a wistful smile on his mother’s face. Bish was always fascinated by the snippets of information about her earlier life.

“I still can’t understand how the Worthingtons got away with taking you from him.”

“The same way most people get away with the wrong thing,” she said. “Wealth. After our mother died, Aunt Margaret had us flown back to Kent for the holidays and we were never returned.”

“Imagine being up against Great-Aunt Margaret in her prime,” Bish said.

Saffron went quiet and Bish thought the conversation was over. He wanted to know more about their stolen history, and was relieved when she continued.

“We hated our English names. Our parents named us Khalid and Safeyah. We may have looked like foreigners in Egypt, but we felt like strangers here. No one ever speaks of it, but I know it killed my brother in the end.”

“So you don’t think it was an accident?” Bish asked. Carl Worthington died before Bish was born. His uncle had been a big drinker, and one night his car went off a Cornwall road and into the sea.

“Who knows?” she said. “He was old enough to remember more than I ever could. Carl had adored my parents and spoke of them often, reminding me of how happy we had been in Alexandria. A simple life, but Bashir Nasrallah was not a simple man. Just one of few words.”

“And you never saw him again?”

“No. I think my father tried once or twice to see us, but I can’t imagine Aunt Margaret making it easy for him. He remarried years later. That much she chose to share with us.”

Bish heard bitterness in her voice, but sadness in her sigh.

“I went a bit silly after my brother died,” she said. “Aunt Margaret told me often enough that my reputation was in tatters. I met your father and then you happened, when I was just about Bee’s age. I told him I was pregnant and he could have walked away, but he didn’t, so we fudged the dates and got married. No one dared talk about it.”

She turned to look at Bish. “I promised your father I wouldn’t do anything to affect his prospects with the foreign office. I owed him, in a way, and the expat lifestyle suited us. I think we made each other as happy as we possibly could.”

Made each other as happy as they possibly could? A marriage like that could be read in so many different ways.

“Saffron’s not such a bad name,” he said.

“It’s damn ridiculous,” she said with a laugh. “So twee. It sounds worse as I get older. Thank God Bee and Stevie had the sense to call me Sofi.”