Mia didn’t respond immediately. ‘I’m not sure. I never mentioned her name, not once, in the years after the accident, even though her name was always there, right on the tip of my tongue. Every day I woke up wanting to ask him – was she the reason this had happened to us? I could see it in his eyes too, the need to confess what he’d done. He wanted to clear his conscience . . . But we were both cowards. We never said her name because then we would have to face what that meant for us.’

Clover sighed. She felt drained. Everything was a mess, nothing as it had seemed. Black was white and up was down. ‘I’m sorry, Mia. I wanted this film to give you peace. An answer.’

‘A different answer. I wanted it to give me a different answer to what I feared. When Cory died, all I had left was the hope that it was all Kit’s fault. I needed him to be the bastard everyone believed him to be.’

Clover watched the man in the midnight snow as he walked back to the hotel. He looked up as he stepped into the pools of light from the windows and she felt her heart catch as Kit’s eyes found her immediately, standing on her balcony. Instantly, she felt the gravitational pull between them. She wanted to run to him and tell him that she knew exactly what he was – and what he wasn’t. That she’d been so wrong, about all of it.

But he kept on walking, disappearing a moment later into the hotel, and whatever instincts flashed between them, she knew he wasn’t coming to find her. He had lost everything – if Pipe Dreams had amplified a perceived truth about what he had done, the new film had unearthed another truth, so much worse, about what Cory had done. Kit had kept his secrets for good reasons and now she’d blown his world apart. He had been right all along not to trust her.

The jarred memory fragment had bloomed now and she remembered him, alone on his surfboard at the paddle-out – apart from everyone, already on the outside. He’d been wronged by a friend, betrayed by the woman he loved, rejected by the sport he’d made his home, yet still he’d continued, quietly, trying to do the right thing anyway. He’d been everything Mia hadn’t wanted. A good guy, with all the bad luck of an early worm.

*

Clover walked slowly, forgetting to look in the windows of the boutiques. She was supposed to be doing some Christmas shopping – there was a dress somewhere down here that Matty had spied and was coveting. She was going to need some cheering up. Julian hadn’t returned any of her calls, all worst fears now confirmed.