They’d called out the Land, Sea and Air Rescue (They? They?!). The police were cordoning everything off. Someone had contacted a priest. He was from Our Lady Star of the Sea, Hastings. A priest. Who said a short prayer.

I put that down to the Author. I can’t think an actual priest would turn up and start praying and sprinkling Holy Water everywhere at … 2 a.m. No. She set it all up. Definitely. I mean to have him standing there, muttering. All in black. And the helicopter flying overhead, making his robes flap like a raven’s wings (did that sound as clumsy when you just read it as when I just thought it? It did? Sorry. How embarrassing). And the searchlights picking out random household items in the cascading wall of mud and rubble. Like the climax of a bad disaster movie. You know, it just doesn’t strike me as … as credible. It seems false. Staged.

Okay. I was torn. I was trying my best to step outside myself and see this from the Author’s point of view. It was certainly a grand send-off. It was huge. Dramatic. A huge send-off for such a quiet and basically … I don’t really mean ‘quiet’, and I kind of want to say ‘blank’, but I don’t really mean that, either. Just … well, private. Will that do? Private and … and … the opposite of an extrovert. The opposite of an attention-seeker. Modest. And natural. The Author keeps trying to feed me ‘unassuming’. And the Author is right. It’s a good word. It describes Carla to a T. But I’m not going to … Okay. Okay. Unassuming. Such a gentle and unassuming character as Carla.

Happy now?

I mean to finish her off like this. In such a … you know … dramatic …

I actually think I’m feeling … I’m almost feeling grateful. Grateful that I didn’t have to sit around and watch the two of them together – her and Huff. Instead she’s just (the Author) … she’s just, you know, torn everything away. Just like that. So it’s almost … I mean there’s no drip, drip, drip, it’s just CRASH! WAAAAH! It’s removed the problem for me. KA-POW! Over. Done.

I’m not actually thinking this. No. No. I’m far too traumatized to be thinking crap like this. Not here. Not now. In the middle of all this chaos and … and uncertainty. With the helicopters and the priest (although the priest has gone to one of the neighbours’ houses for a cup of tea). I’m not actually thinking this stuff, because I wouldn’t – couldn’t – under the circumstances. I just couldn’t. But a tiny part of me, hidden away, is being … is being investigated, I mean … Like in an operation when the layers are drawn back by the surgeon’s scalpel and far, far below all the good, honest, open feelings there are these other less … appealing … but equally honest, at some level …