‘Stay where you are!’ Jennifer barked. Her eyes were wild, with a strange intensity that gave a cold, hard edge to my fear. She looked mad. As if something inside her had been stretched and stretched over and over again until finally, decisively, it had snapped.

I stopped.

‘Jennifer, please, please don’t hurt him, I’m begging you.’ My voice seemed thin and distant. ‘It’s OK, Daniel. It’s going to be all right.’

Jennifer glared at me.

‘He told you, didn’t he? Sean told you everything.’

‘Yes.’

‘So I need to make you see. Make you understand.’

‘Please just come away from the edge a little bit.’

She shook her head.

‘Remember when we first came out here, Kate? When Jake was here, on this spot, right where I’m standing now?’

‘Yes, I remember.’

‘Do you remember what I said to him?’

I searched my memory. It seemed like a hundred years ago.

‘I don’t know . . . we just wanted him to be safe, for all the children to be safe.’

‘I told him something important: whatever you do, don’t look down. Because if you look down, you fall.’

‘Yes,’ I said breathlessly, ‘I remember now.’

‘Well, my son is looking down now, Kate. My boy is looking right into the abyss, just like yours. And you’re the only one who can save him. How does that feel? To have the power of life and death over someone’s child?’

‘We can both save him, Jen. I know your boys mean everything to you. Just like Daniel does to me.’

‘Your son. My son. They’re the same, aren’t they? The same to each of us, anyway. They mean the same, to us. So I had to find something to make you understand.’ She gestured towards my terror-stricken son with her free hand. ‘To persuade you to keep our secret. You’d do the same for your kids, wouldn’t you?’

‘Believe me, Jennifer, I understand what you—’

‘This is what you’ll do to my Jake if you tell the police, your colleagues.’ She shook the handful of Daniel’s T-shirt that was clutched in her white-knuckled fist, and he wobbled on the edge, arms windmilling crazily to keep his balance. His glasses fell off, spinning end over end into the gorge. ‘This is what it means. You’ll ruin him. He won’t be able to cope with it. You’ll kill him, just as surely as if you’d done it yourself.’

Bile flooded my throat again and I almost gagged. The rain, pounding and incessant, hid my tears.

‘Please, Jennifer!’