Jennifer’s releasing her grip on Daniel’s T-shirt. Hands are flailing towards him, grabbing at the empty air. But he’s already overbalancing, tipping, arms extended, reaching out to grab something, anything. He is dropping too fast, too fast, and we are too slow.

All I can see is my son’s face. All I can hear is one word.

‘Mummy!’

Turning towards me at the last second, his skinny arms outstretched, hands grasping, eyes wide with terror. Disappearing over the edge. There, and then gone.

My boy.

Falling.

One Month Later

ONE MONTH LATER

Chapter 81

81

We shuffled slowly through the churchyard under a slate-grey English sky.

Hundreds of black-clad mourners, faces pale with grief, moving in silence, conversation rendered meaningless, pointless on this day, in this place. Friends and family gathered, babies and toddlers, children and teenagers, parents and grandparents, old and young. Too many who were young. Far too many.

Like a blade sliding into my heart, I remembered the last time I had been inside this church.

Daniel’s baptism.

The tears came again and I felt Lucy’s arm slip through mine, holding me up. We filed in through the arched stone doorway and took our places at the front, soft organ music playing beneath the hubbub of shuffling feet and whispered conversations. It was impossible, inconceivable that we should be here, having to endure the unendurable. It was not right, not natural, that we should be here in grief for one so young. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. The normal order of things was turned on its head.

And yet, here we were. Ready to say goodbye for the last time.

I had cried every day since it happened, set off by anything and everything. Every morning I woke from restless nightmares, my cheeks wet with tears. I was numb from crying, hollowed out with shock and grief. I couldn’t work, couldn’t eat, barely slept. Everything I thought I’d known had turned out to be wrong, and nothing would ever be the same.

Rowan appeared at my side and we hugged each other. Her pregnancy – the secret she had been keeping from her husband, from her potential new business partners, from everyone – was just about starting to show. It was her pregnancy test that I’d found at the villa, discarded somewhere she thought Russ wouldn’t find it. She handed me a fresh tissue and squeezed my hand before going to a pew with Russ and Odette. I could hear the low voices of people in the row behind, asking each other where Jennifer was, snatches of whispered conversation passed back and forth:

Why isn’t she here?

Haven’t you heard?

Oh, that’s just awful.

Can it be true?

I can’t believe it.

And then the abrupt silence as they realised we’re sitting right in front of them.