‘The caravan park where Heather Underwood was found is about half a mile inland,’ I explain. ‘To get to the beach you have to take a left at the roundabout.’ I haven’t been to Tilby for more than a decade, not since my mum remarried and emigrated to Spain, but I remember the way.

The address Ted gave me was number 36 Cowship Lane. I never took much notice of road names back then – I’d been fourteen the last time I was at Heather’s house. And, anyway, I always took shortcuts. I had to trudge through fields of cowpats and long grass to get from my house to hers, but even so, I know that was the name of her road because I remember us laughing at it, nicknaming it Cowshit Lane.

The road narrows and I see the familiar landmarks: the church on the corner where Heather and I used to sketch the gravestones, the Horseshoe pub with its mock-Tudor exterior – we’d stood outside one summer, spying on her uncle Leo and his hot new girlfriend – the row of identical cottages with the playground opposite. I point to number seven. ‘Me and my mum lived there,’ I say, my heart unexpectedly heavy. I haven’t seen Mum in too long.

‘Oh, aren’t they sweet? They’re like little toy houses,’ says Jack, pressing his nose to the glass. Jack is what my mum would call posh. He grew up in a big, rambling house with sea views and speaks the Queen’s English, not a dropped h in sight. He went to boarding school and skis at his family’s lodge in the winter. His mother’s a barrister and his dad is a partner in some big corporation. But there’s no side to Jack. He’s not being snobby in his assessment of the cottage I grew up in. He just says things as he sees them. ‘They’re full of character, aren’t they?’

‘Yes. But you’d be permanently stooped living in one,’ I acknowledge.