Less than half an hour later, I’m on the road. I’ve thrown a bunch of clothes into a holdall. I’ve woken Malo and told him to expect me back whenever. When he peered up at me, rubbing his eyes in the throw of light from the open door, he wanted to know what was going on.

‘I’ve no idea,’ I told him. ‘I’ll phone when I find out more.’

Sunrise finds me on the M25, among the stop-go lines of early-morning traffic. The police, with McFaul’s permission, had opened the envelope and read the note. According to Evelyn, it was Christianne saying goodbye. I’d pressed her for the details, but she told me she couldn’t do it justice. I had to see it for myself, and in any case I had no choice because the police had decided I was a close friend and now need to talk to me.

‘Come down, my lovely. If not for her sake, then for mine.’

Close friend? I’ve known this woman for a couple of days. We share a language, a background, and in the fullness of time probably much else. But close friend? I’m on the A303 now, the road to the south-west, and I pull off at the first service station. I buy myself a big flat white and return to the car to make a call to Evelyn for an update.

‘The police are being fantastic,’ she says at once. ‘Even Andy says so.’

Half a dozen officers, she tells me, are down on the beach searching steadily left and right from where Andy found the pile of clothing. The coastguard has launched the Exmouth lifeboat, and volunteers with binoculars are up on the clifftops that flank the town, scanning the water below for signs of Christianne.

‘What’s the weather like?’

‘It’s a lovely day. Sunny, warm, even this early. Andy says the sea’s still OK, too. In fact, this time of year’s as warm as it gets.’

‘You mean she could still be alive?’

‘I think so, yes. We haven’t given up hope. Not yet.’

‘We?’

‘Andy and I.’

‘How is he?’

‘Very hard to tell. He’s a man, my lovely. He doesn’t give much away. I remember my father when my mother died. Whatever they’re feeling stays under lock and key. Maybe it’s a generational thing. For a while I thought he didn’t much care, but then I found him in tears one day, when he thought no one was looking, so who knows?’