‘I hate you, Gordon!’

‘I know.’

‘If I hadn’t left you already, I’d leave you now!’

‘It was an accident, Mum. He didn’t mean it.’

‘I’m not talking about that—I’m talking about the lies! He did mean those! He did!’

‘But he’s telling the truth now,’ Ben went on. Gordon felt a glimmer of hope, his beautiful boy, his last ally, until Ben, as honest as the attention-deficit day is long, continued: ‘I just can’t work out why he had to tell me.’

Gordon wished he was back with Sam. He was still a fucking liar. He wasn’t confronting his past and telling Ben and Kelly because of any higher motive than that he had to get this done so that Sam would set them free. The condition of the deal. You bullshit artist. He wished he was back on the cliff. He knew what he ought to have done there. Here on the sand, he had nowhere to fall.

‘All I know is that I’ve been going about things the wrong way, Benny. I asked what was the biggest thing in me that I could change, and this was it. So I decided to change it.’

This almost convinced him.

‘Did you think about how that might affect me?’ Ben said. A renewed, heart-rending sob escaped from Kelly. ‘You think your secret shared is a secret halved? Maybe for you it is, Dad. What about me? Now I’ve got the secret too. What am I meant to do? Do I tell Grandma? Grandpa? Do I go and talk to Sam about it? What do I do with your secret? Did you think about that?’

‘Your grandparents already think Owen jumped,’ Kelly said.