Iris’s legs are splayed on the grass, and she is laid out on her belly with her head over the edge of the cliff, looking down.

Three hundred and fifty feet down. Or a hundred and ten meters. Either way, it’s a long way down.

“It’s amazing, Terry,” she shouts.

I crawl until I am at the edge of the cliffs of Dover, which is the exact opposite of the sage advice given in the Visitors’ Center. I lay my body down, flush against the chalk. There is no grass at the edge. Just crumbling chalk. I grip the edge as if that will protect me from my fate, and then I inch my head over the side.

I lie like that for a while, my eyes clenched shut.

I hear the high wail of seagulls, and, behind me, the girlish pitch of Winnie’s laugh. Beside me, I feel the smooth length of Iris’s bare arm against mine, the warmth of the sun soaking through the cotton of my T-shirt. “Open your eyes, Terry,” Iris says.

“I don’t think I can,” I say, and I tighten my grip on the edge.

“Go on,” shouts Iris.

And then I do. All of a sudden. I open my eyes.

For a moment, all I see are colors. Blues and whites and blacks and grays. The earth seems to be at a tilt and there are no right angles or straight lines. I blink and try to remember to breathe and the world comes back into focus and everything is as it should be apart from me and Iris with our heads dangling over a cliff in direct contravention of the recommendations of the National Trust.

The water below is a strip of bright, clear green turning to a blackened blue further out. The water pulls out to sea, then slows, stops, and turns, reaching now for the base of the cliffs, faltering on the black rocks far below where the top of the waves curl and foam, before covering the stone, obscuring it for a moment before slowing, stopping, slipping back, like hands losing their grip, resigning itself to its fate and pulling out to sea again.

Sound stirs behind the movement, faint, like an echo of sound; the suck and pull of the water, the fizzing hiss of it over the smooth rock.

It doesn’t look like three hundred and fifty feet down.

Or a hundred and ten meters.

It looks much more than that. The drop is sheer. Vivid. Almost inviting. That’s when I whoop. It sounds strangled, the whoop, because of the compromised nature of my lungs against the ground. But it is a whoop nonetheless.

“Did you just whoop?” Iris turns her head towards me.

“I did,” I say.

“Why?”

“I have no idea.”

“I think I’ll whoop too,” says Iris.

“By all means,” I say.

And the two of us lift our heads towards France and whoop. Probably loud enough for Winnie and Dad to hear. I shouldn’t be making such a racket.