“She’s talked about Cromer a lot, the last week or two,” I say as we enter the town. I scan the pavements, left and right, and everybody seems to be Stella from the back—old, young, fat, thin, man, woman—there’s something of Stella in all of them, until I glimpse their faces. “She feels happy here.”

But it’s Dad who spots her first.

“There!” he says. “She’s there.”

She looks slighter than she did two evenings ago. Her hair is imperfectly tucked inside a woolly hat and she walks with her hands in her pockets, her arms tight against her side. She glances into a shop window, pauses a second, and walks on.

“For goodness’ sake, Freya—shut the door. The car’s still moving.”

Stella hears me call her name and turns.

“I said, shut the door!”

Dad’s patience is wearing thin, and who can blame him? All the same, I wish he’d let his relief show. The first time Stella ran away, he hugged her hard when she came back, and I deceived myself into thinking it was a Happily Ever After.

Dad takes his time parking up and paying at the meter. When he does finally join us, he merely glances at Stella before announcing that he’s off to the pub.

“I’m sorry,” he says—meaning he’s not—“but frankly I need a drink. Freya? You must be pretty knackered too?”

I shake my head and he walks away in the direction of the Red Lion without looking back. I take Stella’s arm and we head into the easterly wind, past the entrance to the pier and down the steps to the beach. Last time we were here, seven weeks ago, we had our swimming costumes on under our clothes.

“He’ll come round,” I say, as if she doesn’t know the old routine as well as I do. “He’s just tired and upset.”

Stella hmms and shivers. She never takes enough clothes for these escapades. She never takes enough of anything. We’re walking on wet sand, and her canvas shoes are beginning to squelch, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

“I don’t know why I do it,” she says flatly, preempting the question I wasn’t going to ask. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

I hold tight to her arm and press my cheek against her bony shoulder as we walk. It’s stupid to envy someone who is lonely and disturbed, but I do envy Stella. I would like to be enigmatic too. I’d like to think there were people out there—by “people” I suppose I mean Dad and Tom—lying awake at night, pondering the mysteries of my soul.