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regressing. The latest of his letters, to his mother – which David had found in his son’s room just last week – was particularly disturbing.
    A quiet panic made David loosen his tie, as if he was being physically choked in the back of the taxi. If only he could tell someone he might at least feel unburdened. But he couldn’t tell anyone, not his new wife, not his oldest friends, not even Oliver – as the lunch had proved. Edmund was the only one who’d known it all. And now Edmund was gone, and David was alone. David was the only one who knew the truth.
    Except, perhaps, for Jamie himself.
    And there again was the source of David’s ongoing torment. How much did his son know? What had she told him? What had the boy seen, or heard?
    David looked out at the endless traffic. It had now come to a complete stop. Like blood frozen in the veins.



136 Days Before Christmas
    The August sun is bright, the distant sea like beaten tin. David is taking me walking, on the final day of his summer break. This Sunday hike will lead us, David says, away from all the tourists, high up on to the peak of the Penwith moors.
    David is in jeans, jumper, boots. He turns and grasps my hand to help me over a granite stile. Then we walk on. He is telling me some of the history of Carnhallow, Penwith, West Cornwall.
    ‘Nanjulian, that means the valley of hazels. Zawn Hanna means the murmuring cove, but you know that. Carn Lesys is the carn of light—’
    ‘Gorgeous. Carn of light!’
    ‘Maen Dower, that’s stone near the water. Porthnanven, port of the high valley.’
    ‘And Carnhallow means rocks on a moor. Right?’
    He smiles, his sharp white teeth framed by a holiday tan and dark stubble. When he goes a few days without shaving, David can look decidedly piratical. He only needs a thick gold earring and a cutlass. ‘Rachel Kerthen. You’ve been at the library!’
    ‘Can’t help it. Love reading! And don’t you want me to know all this stuff?’
    ‘Of course. Of course. But I like telling you things, too. It makes me feel useful when I come home. And if you know everything’ – he shrugs, happily – ‘what will I have left to say?’
    ‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll never run out of
things to say
.’
    He laughs.
    I go on, ‘I also looked up Morvellan: that means milling sea, right?’
    A nod. ‘Or villainous sea. Possibly.’
    ‘But “Mor” is definitely sea, right? The same root as in Morvah.’
    ‘Yes. Mor-vah. Sea grave. It’s from all the people that died, in shipwrecks.’
    I can barely hear his answer: I have to run, slightly, to keep up with him as we stride between the heather and furze. David forgets he is so much taller than me, and therefore walks much faster than I do. His idea of a stiff hike is more like my idea of a jog.
    Now he pauses, to let me catch up; then we stride on, breathing deeply. The moorland air is scented with coconut from the sunwarmed gorse. To me it’s the smell of Bounty bars, the coconut-and-chocolate sweets I rarely got as a kid.
    ‘Actually, that name always creeps me out,’ I say. ‘Morvah.’
    ‘Yes. And the landscape doesn’t help – all those brooding rocks, next to the wildness of the waves. There’s a famous line from a travel book which describes that bit of road: ‘the landscape reaches a crescendo of evil at Morvah’. Very apt. Hold on, another stile. Give me your hand.’
    Together we jump the warm stone stile, and continue down the dried-out mud of the footpath. We’ve barely had rain in the two weeks of David’s summer holiday. It’s been an almost flawless fortnight of sunshine. And David has been equally perfect – loving, charming, generous: taking me to local pubs, buying me wine in the Lamorna Wink, and fresh crab sandwiches in riverside Restronguet. Introducing me to his rich, yacht-owning friends in St Mawes and Falmouth, introducing me to the hidden caves of Kynance Cove, where we made love like teenagers, with sand in our hair, and little seashells on