Where we stood was an overhang, projecting out into nothing but thin air. I put my left foot sideways onto the edge and peered carefully into the gorge below: it was a straight drop down onto smooth, bare rock, scrubby green bushes sticking out here and there from the rock face on the way down. At the bottom, there was a thin stream running from one rock pool to the next, clear blue water sparkling in the late afternoon sun.

I had another sudden, powerful wave of vertigo, my stomach turning over so hard I had to step back and crouch down on the dusty ground, touching the earth with my fingertips.

‘Jesus,’ I breathed, ‘that’s some drop. It’s got to be a hundred feet.’

‘Having the kids anywhere near it is pretty damn terrifying,’ Jennifer said.

‘I’m an adult and it gives me the heebie-jeebies too.’

‘I can’t believe Rowan didn’t tell us about this.’ There was an accusatory tone in her voice. ‘We should make it off-limits to all the kids, or can we fence it off with something?’

‘I’ll ask her to call the maintenance company in the morning, see if they can send someone out straightaway.’

‘Boys?’ Jennifer said to her sons. ‘You’re not to come down here on your own until the barrier is fixed up again. OK?’

Ethan gave her a quick nod and a smile.

Jake gave no sign of having heard her at all.

Chapter 20

20

Jennifer

Jennifer paced up and down the big bedroom’s marble floor, arms crossed tightly across her chest. She had taken one of her pills but it didn’t seem to be having any effect – sometimes they were like that, instead of wrapping her in a favourite warm blanket (which was the way Alistair had described the dosage to her) there was just a slight softening at the edges of her anxiety, a slight blurring, but that was all. Nothing more. It wasn’t enough.

This holiday was a bad idea, she decided. It was as simple as that.

Maybe not a bad idea in itself – in theory, it was a lovely idea – just not right now. Not with things how they were. In fact, it was pretty much the last thing she needed at the moment, with everything else going on, all the other complications that life with two teenage boys could throw your way.