When exams finished, I found myself reintegrated with old and new friends. I spent the days with Izzy (who had broken up with Tally solely because she wanted to try dating), but also with Alice, Priya, Jack – who had settled into being a solid friend – and a whole group of new people, friends of friends, people from other schools, or who I’d just never spoken to before. I spent a lot of time just hanging around, sitting on the beach, drinking cider, savouring the feeling that I was kind of normal again. I’d even met a boy called Finn, a friend of friends. Nothing had happened between us, but I thought there was potential, if I wanted it. Finn wasn’t Joe, but he was real. He had curly hair and a surfy kind of aesthetic, and I liked him.

It had been almost impossible to make myself turn away from Joe and towards this real boy. That was why I hadn’t visited Joe all summer, not even when I’d been in Beachview with Zara and Coco. Not even to tell him about the baby. It was too hard to move on from him and I knew that if I saw him I’d be right back where I started.

I felt a constant low-level guilt, but it was tempered by the fact that this was his plan too. He’d been right all along: my life had come back into focus in the real world and I needed to live it. I was never going to solve the mystery of his disappearance after all this time, when even the police had failed. The last thing that had happened, in that respect, was that email from Lucas with the message from Troy, and I’d just sent a short reply thanking him for trying, and left it at that.

In July the most magical thing of all had happened: twelve days later than planned, on July the fourteenth, Rafael Joseph had burst into our lives, and now nothing was ever going be the same.

Sasha hadn’t been sure about the middle name at first because she knew I’d been interested in Joe Simpson and thought the name might bring bad luck. But I persuaded her, in the end, that it was silly to be superstitious, and since I’d been part-time looking after Zara and Coco all summer, and they’d spent many afternoons hanging out at our house, talking about the baby, she came round quickly. Raffy Joe was the best thing that had ever happened to us. I’d considered taking him to meet my Joe, but I hadn’t done it. I hadn’t gone to visit two weeks ago when I got my exam results either.

I knew that if I went back I’d never leave.