Then don’t say anything, I thought. Though part of me wanted her to keep it coming. Bruise me.

She was still shaking her head. ‘And I don’t know what you said to Jim in the hotel, I’d asked him to come along tonight, and he’d said he would, maybe, and—’

I dumped my head in my palm.

‘Are you even listening? For God’s sake, Polly, you’re an adult. Please let me be one, too.’ She took the fag packet and lighter from my lap and sparked one up. ‘Sometimes I don’t know how to help, darling, but it’s all I want to do.’

‘You do help. I promise.’ I looked at her. ‘I don’t have any friends, Mum.’ The sentence soared down, wound itself up tight.

Lottie took my hand. ‘I’m your friend.’

I did the only thing left. The only thing I hadn’t done properly up here. I burst into tears.

14

More orchids had flowered. They looked like wings of a bird landing on water, many wings, the yellow centres speckled red, like a fine spray of blood.

Everything seemed different this morning. Not that I could quite think straight, with a hangover the size of Europe concreted in my head. Jim had been furious – I’d never seen him like that. I wondered what Molly had done to anger him so much. To make him want to do that. The reports hadn’t said what his reasons were, just pummelled straight through to the facts. The words were written in neon on my brain. Cold blood. Confession.

Confession. Something that I needed to do.

He’d stopped Fraser, though. Knight in tarnished armour stuff, sort of. Before he’d hit me. I didn’t think he meant to hit me, not really. Something about me dressing up had made him so mad – it didn’t make sense. Didn’t hang together.

Lottie was in the hallway.

‘I’m going out for a bit,’ I said. ‘To see someone I met before. I won’t be gone all day.’

She opened the sides of her dressing gown and gathered me up to her. A warm, crumpled hug that smelled of scrambled eggs.

‘Why did you say I’d been here before?’

Finn was easy to bribe. Half a bottle of banana schnapps had been enough to get him to take me to his beach again. I’d stapled my head to his shoulder and listened to him yelling back at me about dog races and different types of electric guitars as we grizzled past the low hills. Gran-gran had given me a shrewd frown and put a pan with worn plastic handles in her grandson’s hands, commanding him to collect mussels, to which Finn had flexed his arm and said he had plenty, thanks.

Gran-gran made a sound like a creaky chair as she sat down. ‘It was a feeling I had.’ She looked at me. Her expression was burrowing, curious. ‘If not that, then part of your story’s up here at least.’

The caravan smelled of seaweed and warm, wet wool. I tucked my foot up underneath my thigh on the seat by the longest window. ‘You said everyone has a story.’