We meet in a room with no windows in a town of pebble-dash houses. The high street is lined with boarded-up storefronts and betting shops. They have taken me inland, to the nearest station, I assume. Here there is no crash of waves, no call of birds. No cheery stripe of blue peeping out from behind rooftops.

In the car on the drive down here, Tom and I had made a game of it for Finn. First one to spot the sea. I had seen it first, though I kept quiet to let Finn be the winner. Seeing that sapphire ribbon stretched across the horizon, my heart had lifted, despite everything. At the promise of a vacation. Days on the beach building forts and castles. Finn’s feet making perfect prints in the wet sand of the bay.

I wondered if they might handcuff me, but they didn’t. They seemed almost apologetic, the officers in the car. They kept asking if I was cold, if I would like a window open, a drink of water. I shook my head, tried to focus on the landscape outside the windows. I wanted to find a landmark, a place I knew. But I couldn’t. And the farther we got from the coast, the more unfamiliar it became.

They opened the door for me when we arrived, offered me a hand, but I stepped out on my own. Overhead, the cold sky, speckled with a swirling milk froth of stars, was so beautiful I’d actually caught my breath. We never see stars in London. I had a sudden sense that I was only now seeing things the way they really were. And that I, too, was finally being seen.

Now we are inside the room. It’s just me and Detective Pascoe, a gray PVC rectangle of table between us. His colleague, Williams, said she would go and get some tea. She said it like tea was the answer to my problems. When I look down, I see there is a dark smear of blood on the cuff of my sweater.

I find my voice is weak, like something far away.

“You are looking, aren’t you? You need to look. On the cliffs. He fell, but maybe he’s still...”

My mind forms the next few words, but I find my mouth cannot.