She didn’t want to lift her head and see Rosie’s face, still and slack, but she did because that’s what the living have to do – those who survive, they have to look at death again and again, stare it in the face and then try to remember why they keep going.

There was still a little hand-drawn heart around one disc on Rosie’s temple.

Words and thoughts and tears would come later. All of her grief, hot and tumbling, would pour out.

But not yet.

Thea clamped her hands over her mouth as her vision blurred. She squeezed them tight because if she let go she wasn’t sure what was going to come out of her mouth, some unholy howl that would break her eggshell-thin body.

Thea half waited for the production team to call “cut” and the scene to be dismantled, chunks of set rolled away, the gift shop opening up like a doll’s house. Rosie would be helped up, laughing with the crew and brushing dust from her hair. Someone would pass them coffees and give them thick coats and fur-lined boots to wear while they waited for the crew to reset.

She sat in the silent dark.

Swallowing down the lump in her throat, she concentrated on the patterns in the dust on the floor as if there might be an important message in there, one that would only be revealed when she stared hard enough.

‘In the lighthouse,’ – Rory’s voice seemed to come from very far away even though he was right next to her – ‘I didn’t know what would happen to Ethan, but, so you know, even if I had, I would have tried to save you first.’

Thea closed her eyes, watched the colours pulse on the edges of the blackness. Her hand found Rory’s, at first her palm lightly on top of his until their fingers intertwined. She put her head on his shoulder and he shifted to take the weight, her head fitting neatly into the side of his neck where his heartbeat pulsed. She needed to hear it thump.

‘I couldn’t think of him,’ Rory said quietly. ‘All I could think about was you.’

He slumped next to her and hearing his breathing, when Rosie’s had stilled forever, was a torment and a comfort at the same time.

Thea needed a drink, something so alcoholic that one sniff would be enough to numb her and block out thought. Her head pounded and she was so empty that if someone tapped her the sound would echo. But the problem with emptiness was that it could be filled – and Thea knew what was waiting to rush in if she let it. She continued to stare at the dust.