‘Where are you? Why aren’t you here?’

‘I’m done,’ is all she says. ‘I can’t do this any more.’

‘Anna, where are you?’ I ask, at pains to keep my tone soft and calm.

‘I’m at the beach,’ she says, and I can hear the faintest slur in her voice.

‘Is someone with you?’

She laughs. ‘I’ve got gin and a whole bottle of Prozac for company.’

I can’t disguise my sharp intake of breath. ‘Anna, listen, you need to tell me where you are.’

I grab my keys from the dining table and throw my bag over my shoulder. Leon stands open-mouthed as I brush past him on my way to the door.

‘Stay on the line,’ I say, fumbling to open the car. ‘I’m coming to get you, but I’m going to need a little help.’

‘It’s too late for that,’ she mumbles. ‘I’m past helping.’

‘Anna, you need to tell me exactly where you are,’ I say, trying desperately hard not to let her hear my growing sense of hysteria.

‘I’m with Ben,’ she says.

‘Anna, please, just listen to me . . .’

The line goes dead and I suck in my rising panic.

With Ben? I rack my brain as to what she might mean. Then I remember her telling me how they’d bought a beach hut in Tankerton and painted it yellow, Ben’s favourite colour, in tribute to him.

Despite continuously trying to call her back whilst I make the five-minute journey along the coastal road, my mind runs amok with what I’m going to find when I get there.

I park, and half walk, half run down the slope towards the beach, where four rows of brightly coloured huts merge together like a pick ’n’ mix selection. Pink candy stripes and baby blue panels jar against my impending sense of doom as I race along the promenade, towards the only yellow one I can see.

A woman, sitting with her dog on the front veranda of number forty-one, looks up and gives me a friendly smile as I pass. If she’d seen anything that had given her cause for concern, surely she wouldn’t be sitting there watching the world go by, would she?

My heart thumps in my chest as I come to a stop outside number forty-nine.

I turn the handle and peer into the darkness.

‘Anna?’ I say huskily as I step inside, leaving the door behind me open, to throw light into the ten-by-ten cabin. There’s nobody here, but as my eyes adjust I can see a single candle burning on a shelf, illuminating a row of framed photos lined up around it.