‘I still think about him sometimes, you know,’ Izzy said. ‘Weird things, like how he’d have three sugars in his tea, or his weird obsession with Al Pacino. The silly catchphrases he’d come out with. He’d have loved it here. This place.’

Words bubbled up in my throat, words that would always be inadequate. If it hadn’t been for me, Izzy might well have been sitting here with Mark by her side, maybe a couple of kids too. Maybe a girl and a boy, like mine, splashing in the rock pool. Her life could have taken a very different course.

Their wedding had been just a week away. Plans made for the future. A flat together.

If it hadn’t been for me.

That night, fifteen years ago. The night Mark was killed.

A funeral instead of a wedding.

Justice never done.

In the days and weeks that followed, I would try to remember that night, Izzy’s hen do, the sequence of events that led up to what happened. I could remember the meal, having a few drinks and being happily merry – but not out of control, not falling-down drunk. I could remember walking into the nightclub, some random guy insisting on buying me a glass of champagne at the bar. And after that, nothing. A blank. A dark hole in my memory. It was only much later that I learned that champagne was a popular choice for spiked drinks because the bubbles helped to disguise any aftertaste.

I didn’t remember the other three walking me out of the club, or being so calamitously sick that no taxi driver would take me.

I didn’t remember Izzy texting her fiancé, Mark, asking him to drive into town to pick the four of us up instead.

I didn’t see Mark arriving, parking across the street, waving and smiling as he crossed the road.

I didn’t see the car hit him and leave him dying on the tarmac.

But I vividly remembered Izzy’s withdrawal from everything afterwards, locking herself away from friends and family. Selling the flat, quitting her job, a flight to the other side of the world. A life of travelling and teaching that she’d been leading ever since. Over the years she had grown tougher and more resilient than ever, more self-sufficient than any of us.

The emotions I had been holding at bay for the last few weeks surged to the surface and suddenly I was on the point of crying. Which was ridiculous, considering Mark had been her fiancé, not mine. But I couldn’t stop them.

‘I’m sorry, Izzy.’ I swallowed, my voice cracking. ‘For everything, for making Mark come into town that night to—’

‘Shush yourself,’ she said, putting her hand over mine. ‘That’s in the past. Everything that needs to be said has been said, a long time ago. You don’t have to apologise any more.’