A faint smile plays on his lips then fades into the solemn moment. ‘Look, I didn’t want to say while Nevis was here, but there is news. Anne called earlier to say she’s tracked down Gary Bond, the student whose friend, Michael Fincher, took his life during that suicide contagion at Midland. Gary’s middle-aged now, of course, but she’s spoken to him and he says he’s willing to meet us.’ He takes her hand and runs his thumb along her palm as if he is reading her future. It’s just a private moment, so intimate, somehow, that it takes her by surprise.

He says, ‘Are you sure you want to pursue this?’

They sit in silence watching the play of light on the black water. Then she turns and in the dim light thrown from the table lamp catches something solid and dependable in his face.

‘Yes, if you’ll help me.’

Chapter 42

Honor

A new sun is smudging the sky as Honor rises from her bed. Wrapping a robe around her shoulders, she creeps out into the saloon and cracks open the door to what is now Nevis’s room just enough to feel her daughter’s presence without waking her. In spite of the terrible situation there is a wholeness to the morning now. She closes the door, lights the wood burner and heads to the kettle. Her first coffee of the day is drunk, as always, as she sits in the rocking chair waiting for the stove to warm the air and watching the water sparkle as the sun burns off the clouds. Her coffee drunk, she returns to the bedroom and pulls on her tweed trousers, giving them a cursory brush with a damp palm, reassured by the repeating sound of Nevis’s snooze alarm. All is as it ever was. A mother and her teenaged daughter.

At 7.30 and Nevis not yet surfaced, Honor texts Alex. Breakfast here?

Not long after, Alex appears, with a loaf of still-warm bread bought from one of the bakeries in Harbourside and in a few moments the boat begins to fill with the smell of warm, buttery toast. Nevis emerges in her pyjamas, blinking back the light reflected off the water, clutching her phone and scratching her head and for a brief, too painful moment Honor thinks about the parents of Jessica and Natasha, waking up this morning without their girls.

‘How did you sleep, darling?’ How she wishes she could take her daughter in her arms.

‘Any news?’

Nevis shakes her head and, frowning, slumps onto the sofa. Honor hands her daughter a mug of coffee. ‘Thanks,’ says Nevis, her attention still on the screen.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Oh you know, like shit.’ Still she doesn’t lift her eyes from her phone but her tone is less fragile than it was last night, more resigned, with a hint of something else. Defiance perhaps or fear?