The dogs were one comfort at least. The morning after Ned had picked them up, they had climbed onto her bed and nestled down beside her. The cats were ousted. Elle hadn’t been separated from them since.

Penny knocked on her sister’s door. For the past few days, she couldn’t be quite sure where to find her, but there she was, curled up on the window seat, watching the sea breeze ripple through the garden below.

‘Elle? Do you want to come down for some dinner?’

She shook her head. She wasn’t hungry.

‘You’ll starve at this rate,’ said Penny. ‘Just a bite or two. It would make Dad so happy. I’ll bring something up.’

Elle spoke as if she hadn’t heard. ‘Do you know what I keep thinking, Penny? It’s the stupidest thing. I feel so sorry for Celeste, of course, but I’m also jealous of her. For being able to be with him, to see him. For having the right to feel as miserable as I do.’

Penny stared at her for a moment in complete confusion, then her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh . . . about Celeste, it’s not what we thought. I forgot to tell you, on the night of the party. Celeste and Rob aren’t together, they never were. She was just a friend. He was coming back from dropping her at the airport when it happened.’

Elle was silent. She looked to Penny as though she had been slapped, almost as bad as when she had given her the news about Rob the other day.

‘So they were never . . . all this time?’

Penny shook her head miserably. ‘No, never. And I knew but I was just so caught up with everything else that I forgot about it. I’m so, so sorry, Elle.’

‘It wouldn’t have made a difference, anyway. I would still feel this horrible guilt, still feel that this is my fault. If I had never tried to save the hotel in the first place, if we had got someone else in to fix the roof . . . there are a thousand “what ifs” going around in my head.’

‘But Elle, you love him. I know you do.’

She raised her eyes to her sister. ‘When has that ever done him any good? I’ve only hurt him Penny, again and again. Besides, even if I do, he doesn’t love me any more. But it doesn’t matter,’ she said, rising from the window seat. ‘I’m going to go and see him anyway.’

If Elle had thought that maybe the sound of her voice or the touch of her hand at the hospital would revive Rob, she was sadly mistaken. No matter what she had seen in movies or read in books, that kind of thing didn’t happen in real life.