‘Well! Lively. She was dancing. The girls had gone to classes in London to learn the steps so they wouldn’t be left out. It was great to see her so happy.’

‘And afterwards?’

‘Afterwards we came back to the house,’ Ian said. ‘It was gone midnight, but we were still buzzing and nobody was ready to go to bed. We opened a couple of bottles of wine, wrapped up well and sat out on the deck.’ There was a silence. Perez waited for him to continue. ‘Eleanor talked about some cousin of Lowrie’s who’d just had a baby. A tiny girl. She’d been there at the party, passed around for all the relatives to admire – her mother the centre of attention.’ Another pause, then a sort of confession. ‘I don’t know if it was the baby Eleanor was jealous of or all the admiration, the fuss.’ Again Perez said nothing.

Ian seemed to be concentrating, replaying the evening’s events in his head. ‘Then Polly said that she’d seen a child in a white dress on the beach outside the hall. It’s the same beach as here, of course, just further north. And suddenly Eleanor seemed to go weird on us. All theatrical and melodramatic. She accused me of not taking her seriously, of thinking she was mad. Maybe she’d just had too much to drink. The rest of us went to bed and she waited outside. I thought she was making a point. Perhaps she expected me to go out again and apologize, fetch her in.’ He stopped again. ‘But I’m a stubborn bugger. I went to bed. And I’ve never had any trouble sleeping, so I went out like a light. When I got up this morning there was no sign of her.’ For the first time he seemed to lose control. He stopped walking and put his head in his hands.

Perez waited for a moment. ‘She definitely didn’t sleep with you? Even for a while?’

He shook his head. ‘She must still have been wearing the clothes she wore to the party. Nothing else is missing. Not even her trainers. She hadn’t taken off her make-up, because her cream and wipes were still packed, and she’d do that even if she was too drunk to stand.’ He gave a little laugh. ‘She’d love this: playing the lead in her own ghost story. Disappearing into nothing.’

By now they were halfway along the beach and Perez could see the Meoness community hall, where the night before there would have been music and dancing, bunting and flowers, and a big glittering sign with the newly married couple’s name on it. They turned and had almost reached the house when they saw Sandy Wilson, standing on the deck and waving. The sun was so bright behind him that Perez couldn’t make out the expression on his face. It was impossible to tell if this was a wave of celebration or an urgent call for Perez’s presence. Perhaps Eleanor had been found by the search party, with nothing more serious than a broken ankle. Perez hoped so. He would like to meet her. Ian broke into a run.