“Stop this, Kerra. Please. You must stop.”

“I saw it. You didn’t know that, did you? My first boyfriend and I was thirteen years old and there you were, standing in front of him, with your top lowered and your bra removed and-”

“No! No! That never happened!”

“In the garden, Mum. Faded from your memory, has it, with all the current tragedy you’re living through?” Kerra felt on fire. So much energy was rushing through her limbs that she didn’t know if she could contain it all. She wanted to scream and kick holes in the walls. “Let me bloody refresh you, all right?”

“I don’t want to hear!”

“Stuart Mahler, Mum. He was fourteen. He came round. It was summer and we listened to music in the gazebo. We kissed a bit. We didn’t even use our tongues because we were so bleeding innocent we didn’t know what we were doing. I went into the house for drinks and jam tarts because the day was hot and we were sweaty and…That was all the time you needed. Does this sound at all familiar to you?”

“Please. Kerra.”

“No. Please Dellen. That was the game. Dellen did as she pleased, and she still does. And the rest of us walk on cat’s feet all round her because we’re so afraid we’ll set her off again.”

“I’m not responsible. You know that. I’ve never been able…There are things I can’t…”

Dellen turned away, sobbing. She bent across the work top, her arms extended. Her posture suggested submission and penitence. Her daughter could do what she would with her. Buckle of belt, cat-o’-nine-tails, scourge, whip. What did it matter? Punish me, punish me, make me suffer for my sins.

But Kerra knew better than to believe at this point. Too much water had flowed beneath the arc of this endless bridge they walked upon, and all of it went and had always gone in the same direction.

“Don’t even try that,” she told her mother.

“I am who I am,” Dellen said, weeping.

“So try being someone else.”

DAIDRE TRIED TO PICK up the bill for dinner, but this was something Lynley wouldn’t allow. It was not only that a gentleman never let a lady pay for a meal that they had enjoyed together, he told her. It was also that he’d dined at her home on the previous night and if they wanted to keep matters on an even keel between them, then it was his turn to provide a meal for her. And even if she felt otherwise about the situation, he could hardly ask her to pay for what she’d barely consumed at the Curlew Inn.

“I am sorry about the meal,” he told her.

“You can hardly be blamed for my choice, Thomas. I should have known better than to order something referred to as ‘the vegetarian surprise.’”

She’d wrinkled her nose and then chuckled when she’d seen it, and he could hardly blame her. What had arrived for her consumption was something green baked into a loaf, with a side dish of rice and vegetables boiled so thoroughly that they were nearly drained of colour. She’d gamely washed down the rice and the medley of veg with the Curlew Inn’s best wine-an indifferent French Chablis insufficiently cooled-but she’d given up after a few bites of the loaf. She’d cheerfully pronounced herself “Quite full. It’s amazingly rich, a bit like cheesecake,” and she’d looked astonished that he hadn’t believed her. When he’d declared he intended to take her out for a proper dinner, she told him it would probably have to be in Bristol because there wasn’t likely to be a place in Cornwall that would meet her gastronomic standards. “I’m a troublesome wretch when it comes to food. I should broaden my horizons to fish, but somehow I can’t get my mind round to it.”

They left the Curlew Inn and went out into the evening, where darkness was falling. She remarked upon the change in seasons, the subtle manner in which daylight began extending itself from winter solstice onward. She said she never really understood why people hated winter so much as she herself found it a most comforting season. “It leads directly to renewal,” she said. “I like that about it. It always suggests forgiveness to me.”

“Are you in need of forgiveness?” They were walking in the direction of Lynley’s hired car, which he’d left at the junction of the high street and the lane leading down to the beach. He watched her in the fading light, waiting to read something revealing in her answer.

“We all are in some way or another, aren’t we?” Using this as a logical segue, she told him then of what she’d seen: Ben Kerne in the arms of a woman whom she’d assumed to be his mother. She confessed that she’d enquired on the matter: It was indeed Ann Kerne he’d visited. “I don’t know if it was forgiveness, of course,” she concluded. “But it was definitely emotional and they shared the feeling.”

In exchange and because it seemed only fair, Lynley told her a bit about his visit with Ben Kerne’s father. Not everything, because she was, after all, not above suspicion, and despite his liking for the woman he knew better than to forget that fact. So what he told her was limited to Eddie Kerne’s aversion to his son’s wife. “It seems he sees Mrs. Kerne as the root of what’s gone wrong in Ben’s life.”

“Including Santo’s death?”

“I expect he’d have it that way as well.”

Because of his conversation with the older Kerne, Lynley wanted to explore the sea caves. So when they were in the car and he’d started the engine, he drove not out of town, as logic would dictate, but rather down the steep lane in the direction of the cove below them. He said, “There’s something I want to see. If you prefer to wait in the car…?”

“No. I’d like to come as well.” She smiled and added, “I’ve never actually observed a detective at work.”

“This will be less detecting than satisfying my curiosity.”

“Most of the time, I suspect it’s the same thing.”

When he thought about it, Lynley couldn’t disagree. In the car park, he pulled parallel to a low seawall that looked to be of recent construction. As did the granite lifeboat shed, which sat nearby with a rescue torpedo buoy available next to it. He got out and looked at the cliffs that formed a horseshoe round the cove. They were high, with outcroppings like broken teeth, and a fall from them would likely prove fatal. Atop them sat houses and cottages, beaming lights in the gloom. At the far end of the southernmost cliff, the largest house of all sprawled in an impressive declaration of someone’s wealth.

Daidre came round the car to join him. “What are we here to see?” She drew her coat more closely round her body. A brisk wind blew.

“Caves,” he said.

“Are there caves here? Where?”

“On the water side of the cliffs. You can access them at low tide, but when the water’s in, they’re at least partially submerged.”

She mounted the wall and gave a look towards the sea. “I’m hopeless at this, which is pathetic for someone who spends part of her time on the coast. But I’d say it’s either going out or coming in, but in either case, it doesn’t make a lot of difference because it’s a fairly good distance from shore.” Then with a look at him, “Is that at all helpful?”

“Barely,” he said.

“That’s what I reckoned.” She hopped down on the sea side of the wall. He followed her.

Like so many beaches in Cornwall, this one began with boulders tumbled one upon the other near the car park. These were mostly granite, with lava mixed in, and the light streaks upon them gave mute testimony to the unimaginable former liquid nature of something now solid. Lynley extended his hand to help Daidre over them. Together they clambered carefully till they reached the sand.

“On its way out,” he told her. “That would be my first piece of detection.”

She paused and frowned. She looked round as if to understand how he’d reached this conclusion. “Oh yes, I see,” she finally said. “No footprints, but that could be because of the weather, couldn’t it? A bad time of year for the beach.”