I told her and she listened, although the bones of the story were bare. My sister Stella went “travelling” in the summer of 2009, when she was twenty-one years old—apparently with a friend, although we never found out for sure—and after several months away from home her body was discovered at the bottom of a cliff, near the town of Bligh. That was it. I call it a “story” but it wasn’t even that. It had a beginning and an end, but it didn’t have a middle.

How did we know she jumped? That was the first thing Maggie asked, and I couldn’t reply for a while, because there were too many answers to choose from, and no answers at all. Because it’s what the coroner concluded. Because it’s the sort of thing Stella would go and do. Because of those other times, with the vodka and the pills, and the shouting, and the crying, and the running away from home. Because when we were little and discussing what we’d do if we were granted one wish, my ideas would chop and change every time, but my sister would always wish she were a bird.

We emptied the thermos and started on other topics. Maggie told me about growing up in Bligh with her five siblings, and how she’d moved away in her twenties and come back a couple of years ago, and about her job at the hospital. I told her about my mum and her death, and how my dad had coped. I tried to tell her about Cory and our bohemian idyll—an artist and a writer in love with one another, and in possession of a creaky old house—but I can’t have chosen the right words, because even in my ears it sounded implausible and fey. I decided to play it down. I said Cory was a professional artist, and that I was going to start job hunting soon.

Something moved on the edge of my vision. I turned and saw Cory coming down the cliff path. Maggie carried on talking, but her voice seemed to recede, until it had no more form and meaning for me than the swashing of the sea.

“Oh my word . . .” Maggie broke off. “It’s him, from when I was a kid. Except it can’t be.”

I should have said, Who? Who are you talking about?, and left some room for doubt, but I knew who she meant and said without thinking, “Obviously it’s not him. It’s his son.”

I stood up and waved. At first I thought Cory had seen us, then I was unsure because he didn’t wave back. It was impossible to read his expression from this distance, and anyway he was busy watching his footing on the narrow path.

“So I take it that’s your friend, then? That’s Cory Byrne?”

Maggie stayed seated with her legs crossed at the knee.