Fleur marked her progress across the sand, seeing the twins’ little fat feet running after the spider crabs which scuttled in small waves before her now. Ahead of her lay the rocks and boulders at the end of the beach and then a steep track up to the jungle path which led to the lighthouse.

It was odd to see the beach shops; the water sports and holiday complexes set back on the road. A different world. She could hear voices and the sounds of people cleaning and sweeping leaves from the hotels, getting ready for the first guests to rise and take breakfast.

She pulled herself upwards, shivering slightly at the thought of the darkness of the trees above her. The photograph was indelibly imprinted in her mind. She knew those small bones would have been removed. She knew the jungle would swiftly cover over the grave; that the only marker would be gaudy ticker tape to say where a dead child had lain.

She moved out of sunlight into shade. Above her, unseen, she heard monkeys swinging from the branches and letting them go with a screech. This had always been an eerie place, lonely and haunting, full of exotic birds calling out into the silence. She climbed on and saw ahead of her trees toppled, their roots skyward and raw on the hillside as the undergrowth was cleared to make jungle walks past the lighthouse. Who had found the small grave she was making her way towards? A Malay workman resting in the heat of the day? A walker or a tourist? Looking at the devastation made by the bulldozer, it seemed to Fleur surprising that it had not razed all evidence of the hidden grave forever.

As she rounded a corner she saw the ticker tape and stopped abruptly on the path, her breathing laboured and painful. She inched forward towards the metal posts and looked down on a grave full of leaves and dead branches.

She imagined the curled bones of her child lying among the bared roots of the trees and the small insects that must have moved invisible and sure over her face, crawling over her skin as she lay cold and still in the undergrowth.

‘Saffie.’ A small sound escaped and her legs folded under her. She crumpled in the clearing silently, her eyes gazing downward to the place where her child had lain.

She is calling my name. Over and over she is calling my name.

Nikki! Nikki!

She is in some place where light can only filter through the darkness of trees. Water glints on the near horizon. I run towards her, to a place icy, stark and lonely as death. I run towards her but the landscape fades and disappears with Saffie in it. She is swallowed into darkness and I am the one left searching and calling…calling out her name.

It is always the same. I run towards Saffie but the dark landscape fades ahead of me into blackness and she fades with it. I can never catch up with her. She just disappears. I can never catch up with her no matter how fast I run. I wake to an overpowering sense of loneliness.