Mum sniffs, dabs her nose with the tissue before she starts talking again.

“Simon started drinking more after Danny died and Meg kept on trying to leave him but he begged her to take him back, wouldn’t leave her alone. It took some time, but Meg finally found the courage to leave him once and for all, for Grace’s sake more than anything, and the two of them came here for a fresh start when Grace was seven. Honestly, I remember thinking it was the saddest story I’d ever heard. I couldn’t believe one woman could go through so much and now . . . and now this has happened I . . .” Mum covers her eyes with a tissue, forgetting about her makeup. Her shoulders shake. Jane puts a glass of water in front of her.

“Please take your time, Susan,” Upton says. “I know how hard this must be.” She turns to me.

“You were close to Grace, is that right?”

“Oh, the two of them were like sisters,” Mum says wetly, fanning her hand in front of her eyes to try to stop more tears. Upton looks at me but Mum keeps talking. “It was so sweet: when Grace was about nine and Cara fourteen, they’d play dress up and Cara would push Grace all the way to the beach. They tied balloons to Grace’s chair. Remember, Car? How you used to tie balloons to her chair?”

I nod, feeling all the eyes in the room on me. Grace had just seen the Pixar film Up and thought if she got enough balloons she’d sail away. She saved up her pocket money for months. I didn’t have the heart to tell her it would never work. Besides, it was adorable how much she believed in magic.

“But you saw less of her in more recent years, is that right? When you were living in Plymouth?”

I nod. I’d moved to Plymouth to live with Chris after I dropped out of school at seventeen, cocky and sure I could handle life. I worked in a pub and then got a job as a receptionist in a small local estate agency. I pretended I was happy wishing away the weeks, drinking away the weekends with Chris and his mates. It was when Chris started talking about babies that the panic set in. I felt trapped, knew I had to get out. I had to at least try to do something with my life. So just over a year ago I moved back in with Mum, signed up at college to take my A-levels, and got a job at the Ship.

“I didn’t see Grace so much when I was living in Plymouth. I was there for a few years.” My voice is small and I feel Mum swell with words next to me.

“Well, yes, partly because Car was in the city, but also they started doing all those tests on Grace’s heart because of the arrhythmia, and then of course her seizures became more severe and she couldn’t swallow so she became very weak. With all of that, Cara couldn’t take her out anymore in case something happened. It wouldn’t have been fair on Cara to be put in that position.”