It was the space that thrilled me the most. I swam away from the beach until my toes could only just touch the bottom if I stood en pointe like a ballet dancer, and stretched my arms as wide as they’d go. The surface of the sea was mild and flat all the way to the horizon, although the currents round my legs were sinewy and cold.

I dived and swam through the darkness for as long as I could hold my breath, and when I came up I found myself facing the other way. I wiped my streaming hair from my eyes and floated, looking back toward the shore. I could see everything from here: Byrne Hall at its best, like a summer palace, with its swooping tumble of lawns; the woods, still heavily green, but tinged here and there with autumnal yellows; the sea cliffs that started off gentle but grew steeper and higher as they got further from the house, until they looked like fortress walls rising up from the sea, with tiny dots of birds perched on their craggy shelves.

Those were Stella’s cliffs. Cory and I had gone for a walk along the tops last week, although he’d taken some persuading. “Down there is where she died,” I’d said aloud—to myself? to him? to the elements themselves?—when we stopped at the highest point, but Cory had closed his eyes and murmured, “Don’t.” He held tightly to my hand as I peered down at the spume-washed rocks, where her body had been spotted by a dog walker and retrieved by the coastguard boat.

Funny how I was drawn, rather than repelled, by those cliffs. I had studied them every morning during my swim, with a nagging sense that they could unlock secrets if I only paid proper attention. I balanced upright, my arms moving in languid circles as the water lapped the back of my neck, and pictured her standing at the top. She’d have made a stark silhouette if she’d arrived at this time of day, with the sky brightening behind her and the cliff face in shadow below.

I wondered what the light had been like in her last few moments, and whether she’d hung about for a while, whether she’d looked down, and what had been going through her head. Did she not see the gulls balanced on the air like spinning plates, and did they not make her want to live? I wondered what it was like to fall so far, knowing you couldn’t change your mind halfway down. Was it a semiconscious rush, or a protracted round of somersaults, with time to think and taste the spray from the uprushing rocks?