‘Fine! I’m perfectly fine,’ Amber lies as she aggressively sweeps the red paint up and down the wooden wall.

‘See you later, sweetheart,’ Viv says, stroking her face. Then the two sisters walk up the path and away from the beach arm-in-arm.

When they’re out of sight, Amber stops painting and slumps down onto her stool, looking out towards the vast empty beach. Ice laces the pebbles and in the distance the sea lies calm beneath the grey skies. More snow, her mum said. It’s not here yet but Amber suddenly feels stifled, buried under memories and the feel of frost on her fingers.

She glances back up towards her mother and aunt. Their heads are bent close together, lips moving. She imagines the conversation:

‘If little Katy’d lived, she’d be a teenager like the girl on the beach,’ her mother would be saying.

‘Yes, I thought the same,’ her aunt would reply.

‘Ten years. Can you believe it’s been ten years since we lost the wee girl?’

Amber puts her head in her hands and closes her eyes, allowing herself to remember the feel of Katy’s warmth in her arms and the sound of her giggle bursting out of her little body in a fit of happiness. When it was cold like this, she yearned for those stiflingly warm summer nights The Chine had experienced the month Katy was born. Amber would feed Katy in her nursery, looking out of the vast windows towards the sea. Jasper would sometimes pass in the hallway to go to the toilet, smiling with love in his eyes.

A violent wave suddenly crashes to shore, splashing onto the iced beach. Summer disappears in Amber’s mind, replaced by the sound of urgent rain on the window pane she’d heard that awful evening. She could still feel the scorching heat of her daughter’s skin beneath her fingers as she sat beside her small bed, watching as her breath grew more laboured.

‘It’s just a little virus, Em,’ Jasper had said, walking in and putting his hand on Amber’s shoulder. ‘We’re getting loads of cases at the moment in A&E and every single one has recovered within a day or two. She just needs to get over the worst of it. Go get some sleep, I’ll stay up with her.’

‘No,’ Amber had said, shaking her head. ‘I can’t sleep. Her breathing doesn’t sound right. Listen!’

‘Because she’s blocked up! We can’t do this every time she’s ill, babe. And God knows there will be plenty of times like this, especially when she goes to school.’