“The Kenningtons have agreed to drop the charges,” she said, “but they want a restraining order.” Her phone buzzed and she walked away to take the call.
The Crombies looked relieved, and Bish thought he needed to explain the whole restraining order deal to them. He began, “Mr. and Mrs. Crombie—”
“Reverend,” Charlie interrupted, the sneer back on his face.
“Reverend and Mrs. Crombie—”
“Mr. and Reverend Crombie to you, wanker.”
“Charlie,” his mother warned, “let it go.”
“My apologies,” Bish said. “It was stupid of me to presume.”
Charlie muttered something under his breath.
Loud voices were coming down the hall. “The Kenningtons,” Bish explained. Charlie’s parents exchanged a look.
“Tell the Kennington boy you’re sorry, Charlie,” his father said.
“Yet I’m not,” Charlie said, feigning pleasantness. “And if he opens his mouth again,” he shouted to everyone within hearing distance, “I’ll cut out his tongue!”
“Oh, Charlie,” his mother said.
18
That evening, Bish received a text from Grazier. It listed Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, BuzzFeed, reddit, and the words “JOIN/FOLLOW” in capitals. Bish couldn’t deny it was the best way to track down Violette and Eddie, but he was irritated at being forced into something he’d deliberately avoided for years—not because he was a Luddite, but because he didn’t care to embrace the art of ticking mediocrity and keep up with the mundane comings and goings of other people’s lives.
His first Facebook friend request was to his daughter. Bee rang him a moment later.
“You’ve got to be joking.”
“You’re friends with Sofi,” he said.
“You’re a copper. How do you think everyone’s going to feel about posting stuff?”
“I want to keep in contact with some of the kids from your trip, Bee. And this is faster than going through their parents.”
“Do you know how creepy you sound? I heard David tell Mum you’re having a nervous breakdown.”
The fact that his ex-wife and her husband discussed Bish in front of his daughter was humiliating. He managed to talk Bee into accepting his request, but it came with a threat that if he did anything to embarrass her he’d be unfriended. He posted on her wall, Thanks Honey Bee, and she posted back, That was your first and last warning.
He set about studying her list of friends. A handful from her athletics club, her school football team, and about half a dozen from the Normandy tour. The rest were names he didn’t recognize, though he checked those pages just in case. They all seemed legit. The one thing he was certain of was that Eddie and Violette weren’t using their real names on Facebook. He tried every variation of Violette’s name and came up with nothing. There were only a few Eddie or Edward or Ned Conlons, and they all lived a long way from Kent.
What he did read on Bee’s Facebook wall was that Lola, Manoshi, and Fionn had been transferred from Boulogne to Buckland Hospital, in Dover. It hadn’t made the news yet, so Bish couldn’t help wondering if it was true. It seemed too soon to be moving them around.
He went to bed that night with three Facebook friends: Bee, his mother, and Jill from the comms team at work, who had 768 friends. He had ended up in bed with her after the Christmas party last year because they were both pissed, so once again he felt a great regression in his life, accepting her invitation to befriend him online.
Next morning he checked to see if he had gained any friends overnight and found himself bombarded by the Worthington side of the family. Bish had spent a lifetime avoiding them, and now he would be subject to hearing about their tedious lives on a daily basis. By 9 a.m. the transfer of the three injured kids to Buckland had been confirmed, and was being discussed vigorously on morning talk shows in both countries. The French were insulted that the kids had been moved so soon, given the severity of their injuries. The British media commentary was along the lines of “Thank God these kids are safely home on UK soil,” as if France were a distant enemy territory and not a thirty-five-minute drive across a twenty-one-mile channel.
It was now a week since the bombing, and the mainstream press had exhausted their stories about the five dead and three badly injured and were now after tales of heroism and resilience. Bee had already expressed regret that she had got out of the bus as fast as she could, and Bish didn’t want her actions judged by others. It’d break her.
He was checking his Facebook page to see if Layla Bayat had accepted his friend request within the past five minutes when Elliot rang.
“Grazier’s fuming because Ian Parker won’t let us talk to his daughter.”