‘I’m sorry,’ I say as a torchlight from the beach arcs in the sky. ‘What’s he doing down there?’ I ask.

‘He’s with that little tramp again.’

‘Oh.’ I step nearer. ‘Oh,’ I say again, at a loss for any other words.

‘Emma Grey,’ Susan says as she turns to me, staring pointedly. ‘You remember her?’

I nod. ‘Yes, of course, but—’ My mind flashes back to the two of them together at the end of her road. Is that what he was worried about when he saw me? Did he think I’d tell Susan?

‘But she’s your age,’ Susan says. ‘Is that what you were going to say?’ She laughs. ‘I know. He’s always preferred them younger.’

A lot younger, I think. The age gap must be touching thirty years.

‘So, what do you think I should do, Stella?’ she says, with feigned recklessness. ‘What’s your advice? Your mum told me to leave him,’ she goes on before I can answer.

‘My mum? But—’

‘Yes. That was many years ago. And you’d have thought I’d have learnt my lesson, wouldn’t you?’ she interrupts. ‘Your mum said if I wasn’t going to leave him I should give him an ultimatum. So I told him that if he didn’t leave her then we were all leaving the island. Starting again.’

‘Not Emma—’

‘God, no, not Emma,’ she says. ‘She was only a child back then. The joke is, we only moved to this place because he’d done it before. I thought it would be safe living on an island, but he still manages to find them.’

‘You never left, though,’ I say. ‘I take it that relationship ended.’

Susan doesn’t respond. Instead she carries on intently watching the couple below.

‘He’ll be coming home now,’ she says finally and I look down to see the figures pull apart, both of them now with flashlights that bow in front of them as they walk off in different directions: Graham heading for the steep path that winds up towards his house and Emma for the steps leading to the cliff and Jill’s bench. ‘As if nothing’s happened,’ Susan adds.

‘Why stay with him?’

Susan shrugs. ‘You get to a stage in life where the alternative isn’t an option,’ she says sadly, as rain splashes on to her forehead. ‘Be careful, won’t you, Stella? Coming back here. Looking for answers. I don’t care what you find, but some will hate it.’ She looks down at Graham. Her gaze penetrates him for a moment too long before she disappears into her house.

Chapter Twenty-Nine