When she married Fergus he had come out of the army to join the London branch of his father’s architectural firm. It was not the gossip and innuendo within the army that drove Fergus out; he could cope with that. It was Fleur’s shattered life. Fergus foresaw that Fleur would need a settled base if she was to survive, and a completely different way of life.

He could imagine the effect on her if, on a new posting with him, she was confronted by friends of hers and David. Neither of them needed to justify their relationship, but that would not stop people judging them. He did not want to leave her on her own for long periods, so he also, with regret, gave up any idea of becoming a civil pilot.

He too was grieving for the man he’d known from school-days and through Sandhurst. He had joined a small flying club where he flew for pleasure. He assured Fleur, always, it was much more fun.

Fleur, restless, got up and wandered round the house in the dark.

Death was like the resolute closing of a heavy prison door between you and the person you loved. You could never get beyond the wondering; you could never be sure of the shape of that lost life. You could never be entirely certain of either its substance or what its future would have been.

This prevented you answering anything completely truthfully because death ended any choices she and David might have had to make.

Fleur liked to believe that they would have weathered the sudden crisis in their lives. Yet she knew in flaring, painful moments of truth that she had been the one without a real choice. David would have had to make the decision. He would have had to decide between his two beckoning lives.

Yet he had died thinking she was the one who had given him an ultimatum, and she hadn’t had time to explain. This is what had tormented her. This is what had obsessed her after his death.

She could never undo it, or have that time back to reassure him.

She opened the thin screen door and went out onto the balcony. You think wounds heal, but some don’t; some never heal.

Palm trees wavered against the night sky. The sea lay glistening like a thin strand of metal in the distance and the ghost of the girl she had once been rose up to remember the good times here with her parents and Sam, and later with David and the twins. Now she was another woman altogether, here with her daughter to gather up her lost dead child and finally lay her to rest.

How could these two terrible deaths have happened to her? The girl Fleury, who had been full of hope and optimism and passion. Her eyes swept across the deserted beach and up to the lighthouse on the headland.

There, over there, someone casually took the life of a child. My child.