It was the first time her mother had ever raised a finger to her and Jenna’s heart stung more than her cheek. She crept off to her room but, instead of crying into her pillow, she trashed the place. It felt good, finally setting her emotions free and destroying every trace of her neat, orderly life. The next day, when she returned home from school, her mother didn’t say a word as Jenna walked into the living room to say hello. Instead, Geraldine raised her newspaper so it obscured her face and Jenna went up to her room. Every trace of the devastation she’d wreaked the previous night was gone. Anything broken had been removed, the carpet had been hoovered and the bed had been made. There was one addition to the room, a note on the pillow:

No one is more ashamed of you than me.

It stung at the time but now, twenty-four years later, Jenna feels a rush of rage when she thinks about that slip of paper and her mother’s words. Geraldine must have known that Jenna wasn’t Henry’s daughter. She’d moulded the little girl into her own image so everyone would say how alike they were. That way they wouldn’t focus in on the fact that Jenna looked nothing like her dad.

In her session with Tom, he’d told her that there was a very real possibility she might never discover the identity of her biological father and that they’d have to do some more work together to let go of that pain.

Jenna pushes back the covers and sits up. It’s so hot she can’t breathe. She thinks about the sea, the cold, sharp shock of the water. She remembers the freedom she felt, sculling in the water, gulls squawking overhead. But it’s too dark to go down to the sea now, too dangerous.

She swings her legs out of bed. She’ll go to the pool instead.

The path is cold under Jenna’s bare feet, her dressing gown little protection from the May wind. She doesn’t care. She just wants to get into the pool and feel the sweet sting of the cold water on her arms, legs and face. The lights are off in all the chalets she passes but the path is illuminated by softly glowing LEDs, embedded under glass. As she turns the corner, the pool stretches before her, an azure ellipse, framed with palm trees and bathed in pools of warm light. Her heart sinks. Someone’s got there before her. She can see them, a pale blur, moving underwater along the length of the pool. She turns to go as they surface.

‘Jenna?’

Tom props himself up on the side of the pool, his elbows on the tiles, his hair slicked back from his face.

Jenna lifts a hand in goodbye. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

‘Don’t go.’