The man who must have killed him, the only suspect we had, was coming to see us. It should have been terrifying, and it was a bit. The only person I wanted to talk to about it was the person who’d been dead for twenty years.

I heard Raffy waking and mewling, and the soothing tones of Sasha’s voice as she picked him up. I adored those two and I loved my place in their world: I was an intricate part of it, but my life was a separate thing too. It felt just right. I hoped I’d be able to live with Sasha and Raffy forever. I never wanted to leave home now, and yet I knew that, in fact, one day I probably would.

I lay awake until six and then I couldn’t bear it any more. I could hear Sasha downstairs, and I wanted a cuddle with my nephew and a coffee.

‘Why don’t you go back to bed,’ I said to my sister when Raffy was fed and sorted. ‘Let me take him for a walk.’

I stood on the beach in the light rain with the baby strapped to my front. He was all snuggly in his snowsuit, wearing the little red hat I’d bought from Jemima’s online shop months ago, and I was in my trench coat, a knitted beret and a huge scarf. The autumn morning was cold and the air snapped at my face and made me feel sharper.

This was it. Troy was coming to Beachview tonight. I wished I had a way of telling Joe sooner. It would be quite the surprise for him, to have the two of us turning up at the same time, and then … Joe and I might never be alone together again. That was a fact.

I stood on the dark sand and stared out at the choppy waves. ‘Look, Raffy,’ I said. ‘The sea. There’s a boat.’ He didn’t care. He was half asleep. ‘Look, Raffy,’ I whispered. ‘There’s Joe. Somewhere out there is almost definitely something of Joe. There are bits of Joe atoms in every wave.’

I knew that, since we all agreed that his bones were likely to be in the sea, Joe’s remains might never be found. It wasn’t like it was with Leo, where the whole thing had been solved with the discovery of his body. If Joe’s body had been dumped in the water it hadn’t washed up anywhere and we weren’t going to find it.

We would need a confession instead.

‘What have I done?’ I whispered to the non-judgemental baby. ‘I stayed away from him all that time when I didn’t need to, and now he’s going to go forever.’

Raffy looked up with huge eyes and said he trusted me to do the right thing.