I messaged Izzy. She said she’d woken up early too, and came down to meet us. We walked along the sand and, in the end, I told her.

‘Troy’s coming over,’ I said, and I watched her face to see it sink in. It took her a while, and then she had it.

‘Joe Simpson!’ she said. ‘Oh, Ariel! Didn’t that Troy guy say we should fuck off? I thought we dropped it ages ago?’

‘We did,’ I said. ‘But I got interested again.’ I wanted to tell her why, but I couldn’t.

‘OK.’ She was frowning. Izzy and I were still best friends, but since we were doing different subjects (hers were sciences) we didn’t see each other as much day to day. She had a new girlfriend, Betsy, and I was pretty sure Betsy didn’t like me. I was forced to admit, though, that their relationship was good. Izzy was healthier and happier. ‘That doesn’t completely make sense to me.’

‘Me neither,’ I said. She reached over and patted Raffy on the head. He still had the thick black hair he’d been born with. ‘It seems so weird to me that you look after an actual baby.’

‘Yeah. I can’t remember what it was like without him. And, yeah, the Joe thing doesn’t completely make sense, but I’ve been in touch with Troy directly and he’s coming over and I’m meeting him this afternoon.’

‘That’s the worst idea I ever heard.’ She was laughing now.

‘It’ll be fine. I mean, his parents still live here, so he was coming anyway. He just changed his mind about talking to me and I thought why not?’

Izzy was about to say something more when her phone rang. She looked at it, grinned and answered it, saying: ‘Hey, babe! I’m on the beach with an actual baby!’

She walked down to the shore. I waved and walked home, the wind in my face. I’d wondered whether she might offer to come and meet Troy with me, but her life was full of other things now.

Since I finished college at two on a Friday I was at Beachview at three, sitting on one of the benches by a scraggly sort of indoor tree. People passed by. I didn’t get my phone out of my pocket or my book out of my bag. I just stared at the people and tried to get my head round the fact that soon one of them was going to be the adult Troy, and then we might find out the truth.

This was not a sensible thing to be doing. If it worked, I would never see Joe again after today.