I am six metres from the cliff edge. My eyes fall shut, and I can hear a shuffling noise. When I open them again, Eliza is sitting on the ground beside me. Her feet are braced against my hips, her knees bent. She is crying. ‘I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to hurt you, Holly. But I can’t do anything else. You know what I’ve done.’

When she straightens her knees, the movement slides me a few centimetres. She is like an accordion, contracting and expanding her legs, shuffling forwards, her feet moving up and down the side of my body to continue to manoeuvre me closer to the edge, but stopping again and again, crying all the while. I am too limp, and my head is hurting so much, as if it is filling with blood, and growing so heavy with the weight of all that liquid.

Eliza is becoming more and more breathless, by my side. ‘I’m so sorry. Oh God, I’m so sorry.’ She looks up at the sky, seeming to talk to it. ‘Help me. Tell me what to do.’ She pulls her feet away from me and curls into a ball. ‘I can’t. I can’t I can’t I can’t.’

She is hugging her knees and rocking. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I know about your baby,’ she says, ‘and I’m so sorry. I know you don’t believe she died, but she did. Oh God, Oh God Oh God. You’re one of the few people who would understand.’

My head is making me so dizzy, and so tired, and I must be careful not to give any dangerous things away, because my judgement is all gone. Maxine would know what to say and do. Maxine knows everything, and she is always right. What was the term she used? Confirmation bias. The truth was unfolding right in front of my eyes, but I twisted the evidence to tell the story I wanted instead of the one that happened.

‘Why?’ That is a good word, and one Maxine might use, too.

‘I couldn’t love Alice any more than I do. I can’t lose her now. Not because of you.’

I snatch another glimpse of Alice, who is curled like a kitten, and my friends from the plague pit loosen their grip. I hear them whispering from below. Not yet, they say. You cannot come to us yet. You must stay among the living for now.

Eliza’s pupils have shrunk. ‘You see I have no choice, don’t you? Please say yes.’

‘No,’ I say.

Her eyes are circles of white, with a small dark dot in each. ‘Do you understand what Jane and I did, Holly? Do you know about Zac going to Moldova?’