She parked by the Lockwood family home and considered her position. Technically, she was on leave. She should pass the details of Mr. Lockwood’s call to the investigating team and stay out of it.

But empathy was opening her car door and pushing her up the path. A woman had disappeared. A wife and a mother. Wildeve knew what it was to lose someone.

To lose everyone.

In the garden next door, a bank of Stargazer lilies was in flower. Their scent was dense and cloying, and it transported Wildeve back to her teenage self. To the feel of the wooden bench beneath her knees. The heavy crematorium curtain. To the sound of crying and the weight of anxious glances and her folded hands, pink with cold.

So excited, she’d been. Alone overnight for the first time. Her parents were visiting family in Glossop, taking her younger sister with them. They’d tried to persuade her to come, but she’d begged off, citing exams. No need to mention her friend Lily’s party.

Fifteen years old. Loosening the strings. Flirting with adulthood. Studying for exams, acquiring a taste for white lies and cider. Discovering herself.

When she’d returned home at half past eight that Sunday morning—her mother had arranged to call the landline at nine—a police car was waiting outside.

She had pulled her coat tighter, last night’s mascara smudged beneath her eyes, hair mussed up from sleeping on the floor, and reached for her door key. A cursory glance, that’s all she had given them. Her mind had been full of the way that Martin Stokes had kept staring at her and their brief kiss in the downstairs bathroom, and how he had promised to phone her from the call box on the corner of his street that evening. In that self-absorbed way of teenagers, she had not—for even a beat in time—considered the police were there for her.

The “woman police constable”—they were called that back then—had droopy eyes and smelled of coal tar soap. She had poured Wildeve a glass of lemon soda. Even now, she couldn’t bear the taste of it.

She had been brief and matter-of-fact.

A head-on collision with a truck crossing Snake Pass.

All three of them killed at the scene.

Instantaneous.

The police officer had tried to comfort her, had offered to make calls on Wildeve’s behalf. Had fussed about who was going to take care of her and where she would live.

“I’m sixteen tomorrow,” Wildeve had said, head bowed, staring at her Doc Marten boots. Dull-voiced. In shock. “I’ll stay here. I’ll be fine.”

Fine.