I inhale deeply, fill my lungs with the crisp, cold air. I could stay here, I think, right here, until the stars come out, and tomorrow I’ll tell Lotte and Theo how I saw all seventy thousand million million million of them. I turn Chloe’s mobile over in my hand and open WhatsApp and find Bethany’s number. As it connects, I wonder if she’ll answer. I wonder what time it is in LA, but then it is the city that never sleeps.

On the ninth ring, she answers.

‘It’s me,’ I say.

‘Haaaaay,’ she replies, like I’m still her favourite person. ‘It’s Mr Nick Flowers!’

ONE YEAR LATER, SOMERSET

EPILOGUE
AMY

They bought her a new purple swimming costume for the occasion. It’s got a unicorn head with a rainbow horn printed on her tummy, and she was delighted with it. She’s wearing a matching purple swimming hat and goggles and, most importantly, as far as Amy is concerned, she doesn’t have a life-vest, a float or armbands and she isn’t sitting on a giant inflatable horse. She waves at them from the shallow end.

‘She looks like a blueberry,’ Matt says, and Amy digs him in the ribs.

The coach holds her hand up and blows a whistle, and the children start swimming. Amy sits up straighter, and Nick and Matt jump up.

Theo hops from one foot to the other at the edge of the pool and yells, ‘Go, Lotte, go!’ His new rash vest that Nick bought him has the Andromeda galaxy swirling across the front, and his bronze medal, looped round his neck, hangs like a UFO in the centre.

It’s early August and they’ve come to the outdoor pool in Street for the village swimming gala. They’ve set up deckchairs in the grass for the adults, a picnic blanket for the kids. Bethany – the lifeguard doll Nick got Lotte last year – is sitting on top of the coolbox, plastic fists punching the air, silently cheering Lotte on.

‘Is she winning?’ asks her father.

He has his glasses on, but she doesn’t think he can see well enough to make out the purple blob halfway down the third lane that is Lotte.

‘Come on, Lotte! You can do it!’ yells Matt, in his loudest fivea-side football coaching roar.

It’s a beautiful day, warm, but not too hot. The flower beds are lushly planted with hot-pink zinnias and Day-Glo orange canna lilies. A line of swallows twitter on the cables and swoop over the heads of the children in the pool. There’s a large ornamental pond, and water lilies, with leaves as big as plates and perfect lotus-like blossoms, coat the surface. It feels as if they’re in the tropics instead of Somerset.

Nick chants, ‘Come on, come on, Lotte!’