“I was wondering whether you’d bother coming home,” she says. The wine has made her teeth look rotten.

“Do you want a cup of tea, Mum?” I ask, wishing I could tell her Grace is alive; better than that, she’s alive and well. I won’t, though. I know she won’t believe me, and I can’t take any more humiliation. Besides, it’d only make her worry about me more and she doesn’t need that, not now. She looks almost swollen with grief and I can see that she can’t fight it anymore. I try to think of what she wants to hear, something comforting, but nothing comes.

“What the hell have you been doing, Cara?” she asks, clumsily pulling herself to sit upright on the sofa. I’d forgotten my feet are caked with mud, and the skin on my arms is red and lumpy with goose pimples.

“I went for a walk. I just needed to clear my head.”

Mum narrows her bloodshot eyes. “You went back to the Point?”

“Yes,” I lie.

Mum likes to be right, especially when she’s drunk. She nibbles her bottom lip. “You’re braver than me. I don’t want to go anywhere near that place.” She looks distant as she talks, and her voice shakes. “That poor, poor girl. You know they’re saying it was a suicide?”

I nod. She’s talking about the dead girl—the girl whose name we don’t even know, whose navy dress was ripped from her body by the rocks and the waves. The dress didn’t have stars on it. Maybe tomorrow, once the shock has settled, Mum will feel some relief that it wasn’t Grace’s body they found, but a young woman is still dead. None of us can be pleased.

She blinks and, taking a gulp of wine, comes to a clumsy stand, holding on to the back of the sofa for balance. She’s drunker than I thought. Mum gets combative when she’s been drinking. Trying to reason with her when she’s like this is like wrestling with smoke.

“I’m sorry about earlier, Mum. I shouldn’t have said anything with all those people—” but she cuts me off.

“You want to know something awful I realized after you left the salon?” I know she’s going to tell me, even if I don’t want to hear. Her breath is sour as she speaks.

“I was jealous of Meg. Can you believe it? Even with all the shit she went through, losing Danny, Simon being an evil bastard, and Grace’s illnesses, I was jealous. You know why? You know why I was jealous?”

I shake my head, frightened of what she’s going to say.

“I was jealous of how close she was to Grace. I was jealous of how she knew everything about her girl, jealous of how Grace worshipped her mum. I was jealous of how they never left each other’s side, their in-jokes, how they always said they were each other’s best friend.” As she talks, Mum starts crying, her tears falling where so many have gone before. She pulls out a ragged tissue from her sleeve, wipes her eyes, and takes another gulp of wine.