Title Page

There’s a field somewhere

beyond all doubt and wrong doing.

I’ll meet you there.

– Rumi

For my mother and everyone else who got on the boat.

I hope you’re where you want to be.

CONTENTS

Love

Before

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

After

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Eleven Months Later

Acknowledgements

Love

Alice Anderson is exactly where Deborah said she would be, on the cliff in Saltdean looking out at the sea. Not that I could have missed her in that hot-pink fur coat she’s wearing. It’s the sort of thing I’d make a beeline for in a shop, but never be brave enough to buy. I’d try it on, take a selfie, then put it back in favour of something more sensible. Something black that I could wear to school without getting detention.

That’s one of the hardest things about this, how hopelessly normal they are. Alice could be from my year or the girl behind me in the queue at Primark, waiting for the changing rooms. Someone I could have passed in the street and never noticed until tonight.

It’s hard to tell in the dark, but from here she looks my age – sixteen, maybe seventeen – with a froth of blonde curls that the wind lifts up and away from her face so I can see her profile. I can’t see the colour of her eyes, but I can make out the sweep of her jaw and her neat button nose, her lipstick the same colour as her coat.

Judging by her knee-length dress and heels, she’s been out tonight. It’s far too cold for bare legs, but maybe she thought she’d be OK because she was getting a cab home, then lost her purse and had to walk instead. Or maybe she had a row with her boyfriend and told him to stop the car here, insisting that she’d make her own way home.

I don’t know why I do this, why I make up stories about them. That will pass, I suppose. Maybe in a few months when I’ve done this enough times that I won’t even remember their names any more.

Until then, I can’t help but ask myself why they’re there.

Why them?

The sea is rough tonight, the waves a rolling boil that will snatch you clean off your feet and drag you in if you get too close. Not that I ever do. I’ve always been scared of open water and nights like this remind me why. The waves are so loud that Alice doesn’t hear me approach, but I keep my distance because I can see that she’s shaking.