England bleeds? It’s an extravagant metaphor, Beth at full throttle, but she’s right. The latest slip has left another wound in the face of this ancient cliff. Nathan is tightening the turn, giving both cameras a perfect view of Christianne’s last resting place, and Mitch mutters his appreciation. I’m watching the aircraft’s shadow dancing across the ochre planes of the cliff as Nathan climbs again to offer Mitch another angle on the golf course.

This time, it’s perfect. Mitch fires off a series of shots and checks the results. Satisfied, he asks for one last pass over the sea at a thousand feet, Budleigh bathed in pale winter sunshine, the tide full, the promenade dotted with locals making the most of the weather.

‘Done?’ Nathan needs to know we’re finished.

Both Mitch and Beth give him the thumbs up, and my stomach lurches as he drops a wing again and hauls the aircraft round in a 180-degree turn. We’re heading west now, still over the sea, the long curve of the cliffs away to our right. Dunkeswell, I’m pretty certain, lies in the other direction.

‘This is for Enora.’ Nathan must have read my mind. ‘A little trip down memory lane.’

I haven’t a clue what this might mean, but already we’re approaching the rich yellow spaces of Sandy Bay, with Exmouth visible beyond. Exmouth proper begins at a headland called Orcombe Point. We’re slightly lower now, and I can see a string of horses splashing through the shallows, towing a gaggle of yapping dogs, and then Nathan is easing right again, following the curve of the beach, and through the windscreen I can see the oncoming dock entrance and the marina ringed with houses and apartments in various shades of New England pastel. Beyond the marina, on the very nose of the shingle spit that juts into the estuary, are two apartment blocks, slightly older than the rest of the development, and as Nathan begins to circle I find myself looking down on one of them.

The penthouse apartment at the top of the building used to belong to H and myself. This is the place we acquired for Pavel when we brought him down from London. The views, which are sensational, were wasted on my lovely friend because he was blind, as well as paralysed, but he’d spend night after night with his balcony doors open, listening to the soundtrack of this extraordinary stretch of water. The curlew was his favourite soloist, but he loved the yap-yap of the sandwich terns, and the honk of the Canada geese, and when we talked on the phone he was able to conjure an entire landscape from these clues.