Claire looked down at the dress she’d been wearing when Josh died; it was her favourite colour – turquoise. There were small smears of his blood on it. She was never going to wear that colour again. From now on it would be black, or nothing.

‘OK,’ she said, although she didn’t want to, because when she took this ruined dress off it was cutting ties with the life she’d known with him. All that ended right now. Somehow, her life was going to have to go on, without Josh.

Maybe she wouldn’t let it.

Suki went and ran the bath, and then she came back and took Claire’s hand and led her into the bathroom. As sweetly as if she was the mother and Claire the daughter, Suki removed Claire’s clothes.

‘Suki, can you get rid of that,’ said Claire, indicating the dress. ‘Please?’

Suki nodded. She opened the door and threw the thing outside, closed the door again. Then she helped her mother into the bath, sat her down, took up the sponge and the soap and washed her clean, while she sat there with tears streaming down her face.

‘What will happen now?’ Claire managed to ask.

Suki swallowed hard. She’d loved Josh too, in her way. So much. They’d grown closer and closer over the past few months, and to think of never seeing him again was devastating.

‘They’ll fly him back to England. Back to his family.’

‘I’m his family.’ A flare of anger ignited in Claire’s gentle blue eyes. ‘Me.’

‘No. I know you loved him very much,’ said Suki. ‘But he belongs back there, with them now.’

‘I just think I’ll wake up in a moment, that it will all have been a bad dream,’ wailed Claire.

‘I know.’ Now Suki was crying too. Christ, this was awful. ‘But now you have to let him go.’

‘I don’t want to,’ said Claire with a heavy sigh, the warmth of the water and Suki’s gentle touch soothing her, just a little. But the thought of him going back to Shauna, that cruel heartless bitch, made her choke with rage. ‘He was going to divorce her.’

Josh might have had the best of intentions, but Suki thought he was tied in to his English family too tight to have ever got away. But she didn’t say that aloud. Let her mother cling on to any illusions she had.

‘Come on, let’s get you out now.’

Claire lay back, shook her head. ‘Leave me here a moment, I’ll have a soak,’ she said.

But Suki had seen the bleak look in Claire’s eyes.

‘You soak,’ said Suki, taking a seat on the toilet. ‘I’ll sit here, OK? Keep you company.’