When I was a child I’d heard about the Goodwin Sands. They lay out to sea, a few miles from Deal, and were only visible at low tide. Once, on holiday, my father gave me a pair of binoculars and pointed out a vast expanse of what looked like sand in the middle of the North Sea. ‘Those currents are deadly,’ he’d said. ‘More than two thousand vessels have been sunk in those treacherous waters.’ He sighed his familiar sigh. ‘If there’s one thing I can teach you, my girl, it’s never to trust appearances.’ No wonder I was attracted to Calvin.

We flew there in Calvin’s helicopter. It was our first jaunt since Alex’s funeral. The weather was glorious; it was the end of summer and one of those Arcadian days that were suffused with nostalgia before they’ve even begun. Calvin was in high spirits as we flew over Deal, its toy houses and its toy pier where I’d eaten ice cream long ago, and then we left it behind and were flying over the water.

‘I do love you!’ I yelled, though Calvin couldn’t hear.

Clamped in his headphones, he pointed down. Black dots were clustered around a vast expanse of sand in the middle of the ocean. As we grew closer, I realised they were seals.

Otherwise the Goodwins were empty. Rippled sand as far as the eye could see, pocked with lakes of water. The clatter was deafening as we landed. The seals slipped into the water and swam away. They soon reappeared, however, and gazed at us with their sleek puppies’ faces as we stepped out onto the damp, ribbed sand. Seagulls cried, the wind blew. We were walking in the middle of the sea. We were walking on the moon. We were walking in the middle of nowhere.

There was no sign of the sunken wrecks. No sign of anything but our inquisitive companions who swam beside us as we jumped over the puddles. Far away, the white cliffs and the little town were irrelevant. Calvin wandered off and he was irrelevant too. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy. I thought of the sunken wrecks and, for some reason, I thought of my miscarried brother, also buried deep in silence, because my parents had never spoken about him. But I felt no grief, just a sense of peace. I was lost in space, in the middle of the sea, and time was irrelevant. Sunken ships and buried babies were just part of our history and one day we would join them. How could anywhere be so strange, yet so reassuring? I’m taking you out of this world.