Bee nudged Bish and pointed to Violette, a silent order to catch up.

‘She won’t want me walking alongside her, Bee.’

‘She insisted you come along. We wouldn’t have done this with you if not for her.’ She poked him in the side. ‘Go.’

Bish did as he was told but figured his daughter had got it wrong. Violette wasn’t interested in talking and at times he felt as if she were quickening her step to shake him off. Until she suddenly said, ‘I thought they were friends of my father’s who followed us up here that day. That’s what I told my grandparents and they wrote it all down.’

‘Why did you think they were friends?’ he asked.

‘Because one of them said, “I know you.” ’

They came to the foot of the cove, staring up at the vertical face of the cliff. It wasn’t merely the height that filled Bish with awe, but its seeming impenetrability – a reminder of human frailty against the might of nature. Beside him, the kids were staring up at the ancient stone with reverence. No selfies here. Bish saw tears in Fionn’s eyes for the second time that day. It was here that the kid truly realised things would never be the same. The greatest nature lover among them could go no further.

‘I’ll take Violette and Eddie,’ Bish said. ‘The rest of you stay.’

‘I’m coming too,’ Bee said.

Charlie looked in the direction of the village. ‘People were staring back there. I bet they’ve called the cops.’

Bish pointed to Manoshi and Lola. ‘Don’t let those two out of your sight.’

It was a sombre journey up the steps, Violette ahead once more as they took it in single file. On the limestone platform above the cove, the wind made their cheeks smart and their eyes water. But regardless, the view of the area was breathtaking, the rock formations stunning: clints and grykes as far as the eye could see, their strange hues in communion with the grey storm clouds that hung low and threatened to spill.

Violette turned to them and Bish saw she was crying, holding her arms around her body. ‘He hid me,’ she sobbed. ‘They always say I was left walking on my own, but that’s not true! He hid me between the fissures big enough to fit me. It was to protect me. Not leave me behind. My dad wouldn’t have left me behind.’

And Bish thought it strange that seventeen-year-old girls who had sex with idiot boys could still cry like babies for their fathers.

‘I believe you, Violette.’

Eddie wasn’t coping well with Violette’s reaction and was now crying himself. His sobbing seemed to come from the gut, a mixture of pain and grief. ‘I miss my mum,’ he said over and over. And that got Bee started, and all Bish could do was hold onto the three sobbing kids and hide his own overwhelming anguish. All those years ago, a man had tried to protect his child on this rock. Etienne LeBrac hadn’t come here to die. He’d come to be reminded of beauty in an ugly year. If Bish were still a religious man, he would have sworn the dead were with them in this ancient place. The beautiful dead. And he felt that the three in his arms sensed it too.