‘But – and this is important advice here – it might do you well to endeavour to steer clear of it. Sandown isn’t a good place to seek it out.’ His disposition strikes me as belonging more to a good-natured park ranger than a police chief. I glance at his hip; he’s not carrying a gun.

I don’t mean to shuffle my feet but I do anyway. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Where are you staying?’

‘Seiburt.’

‘Happy to give you a lift back.’

‘I’m all right.’

‘You sure? Gonna be dark soon and the road back to Seiburt ain’t as lit as you might like it to be.’

‘Really, I’m fine.’

‘All right, kid.’ He ducks back into his cruiser. ‘Enjoy your summer. Hope I don’t bump into you again,’ he says through the open window, ‘unless you get in a scrap, in which case – call.’

I smile in return and he drives off.

I cut my losses, leave the lighthouse to glare over Sandown, and start back towards the dorms.

Booker was right; I can’t see shit.

Without much open, the grid of side streets back to the dorm is lit mainly by porch lights, a spooky trek, all things considered, and when I get back to my room I collapse in bed, bury my face in the unfamiliar smell of the sheets and stay there.

As noted by the 2020 census, Sandown Bay has a full-time population of one hundred and eighty-two. I’ve met six, who have already given me more than enough to think about. Sylvia and Ellis, the ferryman, the police chief, Mary Anne, Archie. People I never would have known existed if I hadn’t come prodding – spores leaping from a disturbed fungus. I’m overwhelmed, suddenly, by a planet that facilitates the living of so many lives in tandem, so much so that it makes my head pound even beginning to conceive of every story playing out at this moment.

I breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth. The nose is mine and the mouth is mine and the channel leading between the two is mine.

Now, having seen Sandown in person, I know these are the things I need to figure out: I need a snapshot of the time – of Roxy’s relationships, of the sort of things she did on a day-to-day basis, all culminating in the actual day. I need to know what happened that night. Those pieces seem so far away, so elusive, but finding them is the only way I can time-travel thirty-five years back and see what needs seeing.