After that, Mum took to her bed. She just disappeared into some dark and impenetrable place and barely even spoke to me in those few final days. Then one night when I was fast asleep, Mum left too. When I woke up in the morning there was no sign of her anywhere. I felt sick. How could this be happening to me a second time? I raced down to the police station to report her missing. I could barely make myself understood, couldn’t get my words out. It must have been the shock, I suppose, but eventually they worked out what I was trying to tell them. Not that they were interested, not really. The sergeant on the desk tried to reassure me: people often went away for a day or two, he said. When I told him that Dad had just left us, he said that Mum was probably licking her wounds somewhere and that she’d be back, right as rain, soon enough.

When I was woken up that night by a sharp rap on the door and saw the two doleful policemen on the front step I knew exactly what had happened. I didn’t want to hear the details, but they told me anyway. A dog-walker had found her, or what was left of her after the waves and the rocks were done with her. I listened to their words, nodded to show them that I was absorbing what they were telling me, but inside my heart was screaming. I couldn’t believe it at first. Then I got so angry that I frightened myself. How dare she leave me like that to cope on my own? I wasn’t old enough. I didn’t know anything about anything. I needed her.

I had no way of getting in touch with Dad. His work was secret and it was before the internet so I couldn’t just look him up. I suppose I could have hired a private detective or something but I didn’t think of that, and anyway I had no money to pay one with. That meant that I couldn’t tell Dad what had happened so instead I just brooded on his absence. It didn’t take long for all the pain that I was feeling about Mum to morph into anger at Dad. Anger was an easier emotion for me to deal with. Within weeks, I had convinced myself that I hated him. Even if he’d come back then, I’m not sure I could have forgiven him for what he’d done.

And so I sat through the coroner’s inquest on my own, listened to the generous verdict of accidental death and then got on with the task of being, to all intents and purposes, an orphan.