All of them sat. Eddie sat last. His head looked too heavy for his neck to bear, and it fell forward, his chin nearing his chest.

“What is it, then, Eddie?” Ann Kerne asked her husband.

“I told the cop,” he said. “I could’ve tossed him from the property, but I didn’t do that. I wanted…I don’t know what I wanted. Benesek, I told him everything I knew.”

The restless night that followed thus had a twofold source: the coffee he’d drunk and the knowledge he’d gained. For if his conversation with Eddie Kerne had at least gone some way towards burying some of the excruciating past between them, that same conversation had resurrected another part of it. For the remainder of the day and into the night, he’d had to look at that part squarely. He’d had to wonder about it. Neither was an activity in which he particularly wished to engage.

Set against the rest of his life, one night should have been insignificant. A party with his mates, and that was all. A gathering he wouldn’t even have gone to had he not just two days earlier had the courage to break off with Dellen Nankervis yet another time. He was thus morose, his life a thing that he believed was in tatters. “You want cheering up,” was his mates’ recommendation. “That wanker Parsons is having a party. Everyone’s invited, so come with us. Get your mind off the bloody cow for once.”

That had proved impossible, for Dellen had been there: in a crimson sundress and spiky sandals, smooth of leg and tan of shoulder, blonde hair soft and long and thick, eyes like bluebells. Seventeen years old and with the heart of a siren, she’d come alone but she hadn’t remained so. For she was dressed like a flame, and like a flame she drew them. His mates were not among them, for they knew the trap Dellen Nankervis presented: how she baited it, how she sprang it, and, in the end, what she did with her prey. So they kept their distance, but the others didn’t. Ben watched until he could bear no more.

Palm curved round a glass and he drank it. Pill pressed into his hand and he took it. Spliff placed between his fingers and he smoked it. The miracle was that he hadn’t died from everything he’d ingested that night. What he had done was welcome the ministrations of any girl willing to vanish into a darkened corner with him. He knew there had been three; there may have been more. It hadn’t mattered. What counted was only that Dellen see.

Take your fucking hands off my sister had brought a sudden end to the game. Jamie Parsons was the hot-voiced speaker, acting the part of outraged brother-not to mention gap-year brother, wealthy brother, traveling-the-earth-to-the-hot-spots-of-surfing-and-making-sure-everyone-knew-about-it brother-discovering a lowlife nonce with his fingers in his sister’s knickers and his sister shoved up against the wall with one leg lifted and loving it, loving it, which Ben had foolishly, loudly, and in the presence of everyone in hearing distance declared to be his real crime once Jamie Parsons had separated them.

He’d been summarily and with no delicacy tossed out, and his mates had followed, and as far as he had ever known or dared to ask, Dellen had remained behind.

“Christ, that bloody wanker needs sorting,” they all agreed, up to their eyeballs with drink, with drugs, and with resentment towards Jamie Parsons.

And after that? Ben simply didn’t know.

He ran the story through his head all night, after returning to Casvelyn from Eco-House and Pengelly Cove. He’d got back round ten, and he’d not done more than pace the hotel, pausing at windows to look out at the restless bay. The hotel was quiet, Kerra not there, Alan gone for the day, and Dellen…She was not in the sitting room or the kitchen of the family quarters and he looked no further. For he needed time to sift through what he remembered and to differentiate it from what he imagined.

He finally entered their bedroom at midmorning. Dellen lay diagonally across the bed. She breathed a heavy, drug-induced sleep, and the bottle of pills that had sent her there was uncapped on the bedside table, where the light still burned, as it had likely done all night, Dellen too incapacitated to turn it off.

He sat on the edge of the bed. She did not awaken. She hadn’t changed out of her clothing on the previous night, and her red scarf formed a pool beneath her head, its fringe fanning out like petals with Dellen its centre, the heart of the flower.

His curse was that he still could love her. His curse was that he could look at her now and, despite everything and especially despite Santo’s murder, he could still want to claim her because she possessed and, he feared, would forever possess the ability to wipe from his heart and his mind everything else that was not Dellen. And he did not understand how this could be or what terrible twist of his psyche made it so.

Her eyes opened. In them and just for an instant, before awareness came to her completely, he saw the truth in the dullness of her expression: that what he needed from his wife she could not give him, though he would continue to try to take it from her again and again.

She turned her head away.

“Leave me,” she said. “Or kill me. Because I can’t-”

“I saw his body,” Ben told her. “Or rather, his face. They’d dissected him-that’s what they do except they use a different word for it-so they kept him covered up to his chin. I could have seen the rest but I didn’t want to. It was enough to see his face.”

“Oh God.”

“It was just a formality. They knew it was Santo. They have his car. They have his driving licence. So they didn’t need me to look at him. I expect I could have closed my eyes at the last moment and just said yes, that’s Santo, and not have looked at all.”

She raised her arm and pressed her fist against her mouth. He didn’t want to evaluate all the reasons why he was compelled to speak at this point. All he accepted about himself was that he felt it necessary to do more than relay antiseptic information to his wife. He felt it necessary to move her out of herself and into the core of her motherhood, even if that meant she would blame him as he deserved to be blamed. It would be better, he thought, than watching her go elsewhere.

She can’t help it. He’d reminded himself of that fact endlessly throughout the years. She is not responsible. She needs me to help her. He didn’t know if this was the truth any longer. But to believe something else at this late hour would make more than a quarter century of his life a lie.

“I bear the fault for everything that happened,” he went on. “I couldn’t cope. I needed more than anyone could ever give me and when they couldn’t give it, I tried to wring it from them. That’s how it was with you and me. That’s how it was with Santo.”

“You should have divorced me. Why in God’s name did you never divorce me?” She began to weep. She turned to lie on her side, facing the bedside table where her bottle of pills stood. She reached for them as if intending another dose. He took up the bottle and said, “Not now.”

“I need-”

“You need to stay here.”

“I can’t. Give them to me. Don’t leave me like this.”

It was the cause, the very root of the tree. Don’t leave me like this. I love you, I love you…I don’t know why…My head feels like something about to blow up, and I can’t help…Come here, my darling. Come here, come here.

“They’ve sent someone down from London.” He could see from her expression that she did not understand. She’d strayed from Santo’s death at this point, and she wanted to stray further, but he would not let her. “A detective,” he said. “Someone from Scotland Yard. He spoke to my father.”

“Why?”

“They check everything when someone’s been murdered. They look into every nook and cranny of everyone’s life. Do you understand what that means? He spoke to Dad and Dad told him everything he knew.”