I shook my head. “Is Edwin okay? Have you found him?”
She looked at me blankly.
Figures emerged from the trees at the back of the garden, and I sat up straighter. Two police officers hurried straight into the house, and the woman in green jogged over to meet her colleagues in the middle of the lawn where they held a murmured conversation. Louder voices rose inside the house. I closed my eyes again and concentrated on fragments of sentences.
“...fire engine along the cliffs from the boatyard...”
“...could be anywhere...”
“Is there any chance...?”
“...too late.”
Above all of this floated a high-pitched, hungry wail that made me grunt as my insides contracted.
A young police officer came to sit with me, introducing himself as PC Martin Larch. He rested a large hand on my arm for a moment.
“Are you feeling all right, Miss Silveira? You look terrible,” he said.
“Have you found him?”
“Edwin? Not yet, but we will. We’re checking the house and the garden—he’s probably hiding somewhere.”
I struggled to sit forward. “He went to the cliffs. I’m sure of it. He went to find his mum.”
“I need to ask you about Mrs. Mayes, Miss Silveira. About Ruth. When did you last see her?”
I stared at him. I held on to the arm of my chair more tightly. “Why? What’s happened?”
He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m very sorry to have to tell you that Mrs. Mayes fell from the cliff top a short while ago.”
I shook my head.Fell from the cliff top. Fell from the cliff top.“What did you say?”
He nodded, and he scrunched his face so tight for a second that his eyes closed almost completely.
Tears splashed onto my lap, and onto the cream Summerbourne patio cushions. Tears that I’d been holding back for hours. Tears that I’d been holding back since the night with Dominic, since the boat ride with Alex, since my first glimpse of the Summerbourne au pair advert which offered a newbeginning I knew I didn’t deserve. The young police officer, with the battle between his professional feelings and his personal feelings raging on his face, held my hand while the tears fell.
“Not Edwin?” I asked eventually.
“No, no,” he said. “Vera—Mrs. Blackwood—saw it happen. Edwin wasn’t with them. We’ll find him. Did you see Mrs. Mayes before she went to the cliffs? You were here with her this morning when she delivered the babies?”
I swallowed. “Yes.”
“What frame of mind was she in? Did something happen to upset her?”
My field of vision swayed again, and his face seemed to part into two pale disks, and my eyes weren’t sure which of them to focus on.
“I don’t know,” I said.
He let out a puff of air.
“You really don’t look well. Can I get you a glass of water?”
“Please,” I whispered. “Find Edwin. They lost Theo. They can’t lose...”
Martin Larch nodded. “I know,” he said. “Stay here.” He left me then, and I closed my eyes again, unable to separate individual words from the background murmur of voices and the crackle of radios in the house behind me, unable to think coherently at all.
A while later, the woman in green tapped my shoulder. “Are you okay there?”
