“Where can they be?” Melissa tries to keep the panic from her voice.

“Gone for ice creams?” Martin suggests from under his book.

“It’s not that sort of beach.” Eve empties a bag of crimson cherries into a bowl. “We’re miles from any shops. Don’t worry, Melly, they’ll be fine. Poppy knows this strand like the back of her hand.”

No child knows the back of her hand, young hands are identical. The blood flows invisibly beneath the smooth skin. There are no twisting blue veins like hers; no scars from hospital IVs. “I’m going to look for them.” Melissa sets off at a jog, her flip-flops twisting on the sand, her cotton beach dress flapping around her legs. She passes a family sitting down at a table set back from the sea in the shade of an awning; two little boys, a man at one end, a woman at the other serving food, an old lady in between. Melissa watches the man get up, take a plate from the woman, and touch her face before he returns to his seat. The woman catches her glance and gives a cheerful little wave; an ordinary woman having lunch with her family; there must be thousands like her, millions. On the way home in the car, she will rest her head on the man’s shoulder, her eyes will close, and he will drive very carefully so as not to disturb her. Melissa jogs faster, it must be the sweat running into her eyes causing them to sting; her face is soaked with tears. After ten minutes she reaches a stretch of concrete at the far end of the beach; two cars bake in the sun, a trash bin stuffed with cans is buzzing with flies. A motorcycle lies on its side. There is silence apart from the noise of cicadas. Could the girls have come this far? She looks at the sandy path winding through the trees, the tracks of a car visible in the grit. The girls would know better than to get in a car with a stranger, but all the same, panic begins to beat with her pounding heart. She may need help. She runs back sweating, the Greek family are all eating, no one looks up this time.

Eve’s call reaches her before she arrives. “They’re here, Melly.”

She sees Izzy first. Her daughter stands out most clearly; even her back view is defiant, the turn of her head, the hunched shoulder. Eric and Blake have returned from their dip and are chatting on the blanket; Izzy is tickling Ash’s stomach with a length of dried seaweed, dragging it backward and forward across his soft little belly as he screams and squirms, the laughter turning desperate.

“Oh, poor you.” Eve comes forward to greet her, hands outstretched. “They’d burrowed into the bamboo plantation, bad girls.”

“Come and sit down.” Martin pats the blanket. “You’re all out of breath.”

They are treating her as if she were a child, an ill child. Poppy and Charley are giggling together; there is a smothered hiccup then more laughter in small explosive bursts. Izzy is watching them with a smile. Sorrel is asleep, her mouth wide open, her cheeks a warm red. Eve passes around slices of spinach pie on plates; she is smiling at Martin and seems focused on the food. Perhaps that’s why she doesn’t realize that the girls are clearly drunk.