It is early evening as Honor pulls into the car park of the Bristol Royal Infirmary. She finds a space and sits quietly for a moment, gathering herself in the yellow light. Earlier, after the charity shop, she’d driven at random through the city and by some unconscious process had found herself at the Clifton bridge. She left Gerry parked along a slip road on the Clifton side and took herself off along the walkway, past the toll buildings and onto the bridge, feeling the wind bluster as it swept up from the river, bringing with it the smell of mud and more distantly the saline tang of the sea. She has no idea exactly where on the bridge or on which side Nevis came upon Satnam, but that did not matter now. For a long time she stared across the wide chasm of the gorge to the craggy cliffs beyond, watching gulls rise up and bank through the blustery breeze. The other side seemed like another world and it almost was – only a few miles away lay Wales. How she missed the Welsh Marches – Y Mers as the Welsh called them – and the rolling hills around Llanerch, to where she and Zoe had retreated after they’d left Ludlow. All those places – Llanerch, Ludlow and a string of quaint towns and the soft hills of Y Mers – are ruined for her now.

She stands by the suicide barrier and looks over into the wide brown ribbon of water, thinking of that other bridge, spanning the Teme at Llanerch, which, in the early days of her and Zoe’s life together, cast such a spell in her mind and now, for quite other reasons, would never leave it. The Llanerch bridge had none of the grandeur of Clifton but it was ancient and beautiful all the same, the stone blocks of its low-slung arches speckled with red and orange lichen. She’d been standing on that bridge when she spotted a lifeless hand caught in the water weeds and saw the silver ring that Zoe wore on her right thumb flashing in the water.

With a shudder she pulls herself back from the barrier, thinking about what it must have taken for Satnam to have made her way here and what recklessness or courage or despair that had taken. It had been gone midnight, Nevis said, after the bridge lights switch off, when anyone climbing the barrier is less likely to be spotted and persuaded out of jumping. Did Satnam know that? What went through her mind? Had the drugs played havoc with her head? Was it a cry for help or a howl of despair, an act of defiance or punishment or a revenge move? Was it rash or rational, impulsive or meticulously planned?

Satnam told Nevis she had had enough.