‘What a good plan! It might bring some colour back into your cheeks, my love.’ And Evie had been compliant. An obedient daughter doing as she was told. Not really caring, Willow saw. Nothing would matter to her now. Not the green tidal energy she’d been planning in the Sound off Hvidahus or her role in the church. The life had gone out of her. The parents watched from the doorway until the women had taken the path across the fields. Not waving, but looking as if this was a farewell, as if Evie was starting out on a long voyage.

They walked between the tide line and the water. There was that sense of free floating, of the air and the sea all around them. The tide was low, but there were no other footprints on the beach. Evie was wearing a long hand-knitted cardigan, the colour of heather, and though it wasn’t a cold day she huddled inside it.

‘Every day is worse than the one before,’ she said. ‘At first there was just shock, and I thought I could deal with it. With my faith, and the help of my friends and family, I thought I could cope with anything. But I can’t. Not this.’

Willow had nothing to say.

‘Everyone thought John was the lucky one,’ Evie went on. ‘Lucky to be marrying me, I mean. A widower. So much older. But it was quite the other way round. I couldn’t believe my good fortune when he asked me to marry him. I’d dreamed of nothing else since our first date. Of that ring on my finger. Sharing the rest of our lives.’

Willow bent to pick up a shell. It was pink and perfect, a series of shining chambers inside, smooth to the touch.

‘I don’t think I believe in God any more,’ Evie said. The confession was defiant. She sounded like a three-year-old shouting out forbidden smutty words: bum, willy, poo. Willow was sure she hadn’t admitted any loss of faith to her parents. But this anger was surely healthier than the dumb compliance that she’d shown in the house.

‘Have you any idea what Jerry Markham might have wanted to talk to you about?’ Willow asked. ‘You said he’d left a message on your voicemail.’

‘No!’ It was as if bereavement had given her the licence to be rude. Perhaps for the first time in her life. ‘I don’t care about Jerry. I don’t give a shit about him.’

Willow wondered if Perez had behaved like this when his fiancée had died. Had he stamped his feet like a three-year-old and yelled at strangers. Perhaps in his own way he was still doing that. ‘Would the message still be on your phone?’ she asked.

Evie looked at her. ‘I deleted it. Why?’