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I am conflicted as I turn off the bike and help Rowan climb off. Half of me despises her. For existing. For being here. For being any part of a stunt that might harm my children. The other half feels concern for her and a reluctant sympathy: she is shivering, her hands ice to the touch. I am aware of what Fen and Orly can be like; I can imagine exactly how they convinced her to go along with the plan, how they made it seem easy.

“Head inside and get warm,” I tell Rowan, who seems distant and lost in her own thoughts. I wonder if she’s thinking of Hank. And of the boat she couldn’t reach, the radio she couldn’t retrieve. I wonder what she thinks of us, this odd little family she has found herself trapped with, instead of the husband she came here to find.

I will have to tell my kids who she really is. I will have to warn them that she’s a liar. I’m not sure when or how to do this.

I walk back to meet them on the hill track. The sky is charcoal and releases a spattering of rain. I hear the kids before I see them, their voices drifting up and around. They are talking about Claire. Raff and Fen are telling Orly what they remember. Things like she always had music on, every second of the day , or she was really good at gymnastics, she showed us how to tumble and flip , or she used to put oysters under her nose and pretend they were boogers . And though they do this often—he craves the details—it stops me in my tracks because they are always things I’d forgotten and there is something profound about being reminded that they had specific relationships of their own with her.

My kids round the bend and fall quiet as they see me. Once, not long ago, I would have joined them easily—we were never apart, the four of us. Now I am a conversation killer, a mood deflater.

“Fen,” I say, thinking to ask if she’s alright, thinking no one should have to see a body spat out by the sea, or any dead body. I’ll tell her I want to look after her, that she shouldn’t be alone. That we will drink hot chocolate all crammed together on the couch like we used to. And that she will forget this. My three kids look at me and something in me panics and instead what comes out of my mouth is, “I had no idea you could be so stupid.”

Her face falls. When she replies I almost don’t hear it. “I’m sorry,” she says, and in response to my callousness Raff is no longer angry with his sister, but with me, he can’t believe me, and I agree with him: I am an asshole.

I look at Fen once more and think my darling girl .

It starts to rain in earnest as I lead the way home.

I was not meant to have to do this part alone. The teenage part. I was changing her nappies yesterday, and today I am grappling with the reflection of my failures in her too-wise eyes. I am trying to allow her to grow while simultaneously keeping her from drifting away. I want her to know life, its beauties and its complexities, I want her to take risks and make mistakes and know love as we all should, and yet those things feel too big, they are dwarfing us, she is just a baby and I really need my wife.