“I’m fifteen, maybe twenty minutes away.” Jon grimaces, looks at his watch again.

There’s an angry shout from Jon’s phone and then nothing as the woman hangs up. Jon shouts “Fuck!” into the wind before he bends down towards me.

“Look, Cara, I’m so sorry but I’ve got to run. I’m really late for an appointment with my wife.” He grips my upper arm, too hard for it to be reassuring. It’s almost like he’s the one who needs to hold on to something stable now.

I twist slightly under his grasp. His grip loosens.

“Sorry. Just promise me you won’t do anything, like go to the police, without talking to me first.” His eyes bulge, his mouth looks ugly behind his beard.

“I won’t, I promise,” I say.

“Good. That’s good. We’ll speak later,” he says before standing up and jogging away down the path.

I lift my hand to my face; my cheeks are wet. I lie back. It feels so easy to let myself dissolve. I shake with soundless sobs, Grace’s smiling face so clear in my mind I feel like I could touch her. I cry. I cry because I never knew her, not really. I cry until my throat is sore and my face swells. I cry until I feel completely empty. When I finally stand, I walk away from the path, towards the cliff edge. My body is so heavy it feels like the earth is pulling me, dragging me down. I hear the seagulls circling overhead, hear Grace giggling when she said it sounded like they were screaming my name. I look down at the white sea below and think how easy it would be, how easy just to let myself go. I stand at the edge, close my eyes, and see Grace in front of me again, laughing, holding her arms out to me.

“Woah, you’re making me nervous. Maybe step back a bit?”

I open my eyes. The photographer Jon was talking to earlier is just behind me, beckoning me to come back. I’m aware suddenly how I must look, standing at the edge of the cliff, my face swollen, eyes red and raw with sorrow. I wipe my face and step back, next to him.

“That’s better,” he says, smiling at me. He offers me his hand—it’s warm. “I’m Ben.”

“Cara.”

He nods like he knew my name already.

“Do you think Grace is dead?” I ask.

He looks down at his sneakers, gray with age, kicks one foot against the other and says, “Shit, I don’t know. Probably. That’s what the police are saying. They’ve got boats and a dive team out now, apparently. I don’t know why they’re bothering really, the bodies will come in on the tide most likely.”

“Bodies?”

He looks away from me, as though he’s said something he shouldn’t.

“Yeah. The police reckon Simon probably jumped with her. He had a history of mental illness, apparently he always got worse over the summer, around the anniversary of his son’s death so . . .” Ben keeps talking, but I’ve stopped listening. Simon’s mental health deteriorated over the summer because that’s when his life started to fall apart.