I turn from the gate and stumble back towards the main road, tears blurring my vision. I can’t do it. I can’t go and stand at that grave. I can’t say goodbye to my beautiful child without knowing what happened that night. I have to get home – if I go home then I can think straight and maybe the fog in my head will clear.

It’s just a few hundred metres from here yet every step I take feels leaden, like my body is trying to stop me from getting there.

At the top of the hill the Downs spread out across the horizon and I force myself onwards until I reach the dip in the road and turn left into an expanse of ash trees. I can’t see the river yet but I can sense it. The air changes the closer you get to the water, it becomes damp and ripe. As I walk through the wooded copse I hear voices behind me, whispering, but when I turn round there is no one there, just the trees swaying in the breeze.

I quicken my pace and head towards the stones, Elspeth’s stones. I can see them up ahead, the final resting place of Sir Edwin Chatto, gallant Knight of Sussex, and his beautiful Lady Vivien. At least, that was what Elspeth said they were. In reality the stones were just the remains of old millstones from the nineteenth century but Elspeth wasn’t satisfied with that. The stones had to be special, they had to have a deeper meaning, and so the story of Sir Edwin and Lady Vivien was born.

When I reach the stones I stop for a moment to catch my breath, remembering the days when I would stand here for hours waiting for Elspeth to finish talking to her long-dead friends. Sometimes she would bring flowers and place them on the stones for Lady Vivien’s birthday or the anniversary of her death. Other times we’d bring a picnic and she’d leave an offering of cake or fruit. It would seem strange to most people, but Elspeth had always been that way.