‘The problem was, there was no one else around. We weren’t on the main beach. We’d gone to a quiet part, away from the crowds, because our mother didn’t like crowds. When she couldn’t find Kitty, we had to go through the dunes onto the golf course. There were three men. I remember that. My mother was crying and begging them to help. Even then, I didn’t understand, not really. I thought Kitty had run off. She did that sometimes, you see. She didn’t really get on with our mother. They were always rowing and sometimes Kitty would disappear for hours.’

Emer paused and took a sip of her drink.

‘I thought it was my fault. We’d had a row and, because of that, Kitty was gone. Because she couldn’t swim, everyone assumed she’d drowned. I did too, at first. There were people out searching the coast. But later that evening, something happened.’

‘What?’

‘We were on holiday at the time. In Lahinch, a seaside town in the west of Ireland. We were staying in a hotel. At some point, someone must have sent me to bed. I was lying in the room by myself, trying to understand what had happened. I couldn’t accept what they’d told me. Kitty hated the water. Why would she have tried to go in? I kept thinking someone had made a mistake and if they just looked a little harder, surely they’d find her.

‘Then the door opened. I thought it was my mother, coming to check I was okay. But it was Kitty. She said she’d come to say goodbye. I asked her where she was going and she said she couldn’t tell me. I begged her to stay. She told me she was sorry, and then she left.

‘I tried to stop her. But she’d always been faster than me. I remember chasing after her along the hotel corridor. It was like one of those dreams, you know the ones where you’re chasing someone but you can’t catch up with them no matter how fast you run?’

Which is exactly what it sounded like, Dee thought. She’d had similar dreams herself in the months after her ex-husband’s death. Grief was a bastard that messed with your mind in all sorts of ways.