She swims on towards the platform, only twenty yards away now, trying not to kick too hard. It’s happened before. Nothing to worry about if she just relaxes and stretches. But it’s not going away. Treading water, she stops to bend down and massage the cramping muscles. A spasm shoots up her left leg and she cries out involuntarily, swallowing seawater. She coughs and gulps for air, panic rising. And then the other leg goes, a bolt of excruciating pain that doubles her up. She’s in trouble here. This is the worst cramp she’s ever had.

She tries to call out to a group of bronzed teenagers who are now pushing each other off the platform, but she’s coughing too much, desperate for air. The teenagers don’t seem to hear her. She shouts again, thrashing about in the water as she tries to get their attention. She can’t breathe. Each time her head goes under, she sinks further down into the deep before somehow coming back to the surface. This time though she’s too far under, losing consciousness. She knows she won’t make it back up. She’s dropping, further and further.

And all she can think of is Jake brewing tea in their tent in the rain.

14

Jake

Jake asks the bus driver to stop at Ogbourne St George on his way back from seeing DI Hart in Swindon. Five minutes later, he’s walking the Ridgeway, a kestrel hovering in the warm currents up ahead of him. His destination is the Bluebell at Rockbourne, a village two miles to the east, where he thinks Kate stopped off that night to have a drink. A photo of the bar on the pub’s website matches the interior on the CCTV footage.

It’s good to be back on the ancient route, which covers some of the most remote parts of the North Wessex Downs. Soon after they met, he and Kate completed all eighty-seven miles of it with old friends of hers, walking a different section each weekend. Vast open skies, rolling chalk downlands, Iron Age forts and lively conversation. It’s the chats he misses most. Kate was a great listener.

Jake sets off at a decent pace, the wind in his long hair, knowing that there’s a drink at the other end. He’s got just enough cash for a pint. He should leave the pub to DI Hart, but he wants to talk to the barman himself, see the place Kate visited on her way home. He’s been over that last night so many times, blaming himself for the accident, for initially arranging the police job. If he earned more as a writer, she could have stayed a portrait painter. And then there was his tryst, caught on camera.