Umber glanced at his watch. It was nearly six o'clock. If it was not already too late for conducting business at Le Templier & Burnouf, it surely would be by the time he got there. So, either he left the statement where it was… or he was not leaving Jersey as soon as he wanted to.

Another quarter of an hour had passed before Chantelle returned to the car. She must have read Umber's heightened anxiety in his expression, because the first words she spoke to him were, 'What's wrong?'

Plenty was the answer. But what Umber actually said was, 'There's been a change of plan.'

'I'm not going alone.'

It was the third or fourth time Chantelle had said so and Umber had reluctantly concluded that she meant it. They were sitting in Umber's hire car in a desolate corner of the Airport car park, watching the light fade slowly beyond the terminal building as the last flights of the day came and went. Chantelle's refusal to leave without him that night would soon become unalterable, because leaving that night would soon become impossible.

'Jem put me on a ferry to St Malo on Thursday and told me he'd join me there the next day. But he was dead by then. I waited for him. But he never came. I don't want to do that again. I've spent too much of the past few years alone, Shadow Man. I can't do it any more.'

'It's too risky to stay, Chantelle.'

'You're staying.'

'Because I've got to get that statement out of Burnouf's office. I have no choice.'

'Fine. Get the statement first thing tomorrow. Then we'll go.'

'OK,' said Umber, glumly accepting the reality of her decision. 'Have it your way.'

'Do you think they'll have found Eddie's body yet?'

'Maybe.'

'And do you think they'll be looking for us?'

'If they've found him, for certain.'

'Better not stay here, then, had we?'

'Where do you suggest we go, Chantelle? It's a small island.'

'But not too small to hide in. Let's get moving.'

Trade was slack at the Prince of Wales, the hotel overlooking the beach at Greve de Lecq on Jersey's north coast. Postcards for sale at reception depicted the bay in all its kiss-me-quick, bucket-and-spade summer jollity. The story on a windy night at the end of March was rather different. A couple of rooms were readily to be had at a knock-down rate.

Umber tried to persuade Chantelle to eat something, but she insisted she was not hungry and in truth he had no appetite himself. After booking in, they walked down to the beach and stood among the deserted cafes and souvenir stalls as the sea crashed in, the surf a ghostly grey rim to the blackness of the night-time ocean.

'You saw me that day, didn't you, Shadow Man? The day my first life ended. The life I don't even remember. You were at Avebury on the twenty-seventh of July, 1981.'

'Me and a few others, yes.'

'But most of them are dead, aren't they? My sister. My brother. Your wife. All gone now.'

'What about the day your second life ended, Chantelle? Can you bear to tell me about that?'

'Reckon I've got to.'

'It'd be good if you wanted to.'

'I do. But it's like…' She looked round at him, her expression indecipherable in the darkness. 'Jem never thought you'd team up with Wisby. That was a real shock to him, y'know.'

'I didn't team up with him.'

'No. Guess you didn't. But it looked like you had. And that tore something out of Jem. He'd thought of you as a… fellow-victim. He didn't blame you. He only sent the letters to people he blamed… for not getting it right.'

'Why did he send the letters, Chantelle? I mean, really, why?

'Why didn't I stop him's a better question. But that's starting at the wrong end. I have to tell you about Sally first.' She shivered. 'Let's go inside.'

There was a trayful of paraphernalia for making tea and coffee in Umber's room. He turned the radiator up to maximum while the kettle was boiling and went to pull the curtains, but Chantelle asked him to leave them open. He did not argue.

He sat on the bed and Chantelle took the only chair, which she dragged close to the radiator. Energy was failing her almost visibly now. She looked drained and haunted and, somewhere deep inside, damaged. She sat hunched in the chair, holding her mug of coffee in both hands, sipping from it as she spoke, her voice barely above a whisper.

'I suppose I knew from my early teens there was something iffy about the way Da -' She broke off for a second, then resumed. 'About the way Roy made a living. And about the people he did business with. I never came out and asked. That wasn't encouraged. I was spoiled rotten and I liked it. We had it soft in Monte Carlo. Big duplex looking straight out onto the Med. Everything I wanted. Plus loads of things I didn't even know I wanted. Except… background. There was no family. No grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins like my friends had. Unless you counted Uncle Eddie, which you can bet I didn't. Just a blank. Only children of dead only children. That was Roy and Jean's story. And they were sticking to it.

'It didn't bother me anyway. I was having too much fun. After I finished school, they wanted me to go to university and I thought, great, that'll be in England. But no. They didn't want that. Easy to see why now. At the time, I thought they were just being… over-protective. They were keen on Nice, so I could come home at weekends. My French was certainly up to it. We argued. In the end, I went nowhere. That pissed them off. I went with boys they didn't approve of. That pissed them off some more. Then I met Michel and it was, like, all is forgiven. He was perfect as far as they were concerned. Even when I went to Paris with him.

'Then came the Wimbledon trip. They couldn't really object after going such a bundle on him. He was a tennis player, after all. And I didn't know there was any reason why they should object. A fortnight in Paris had been no problem. So, what did they do? They came with us. Michel got them tickets for the tennis, of course. He more or less had to. He'd rented a flat near the club and I stayed with him there. Roy and Jean booked themselves into a plush hotel on Wimbledon Common. I thought – I honestly did – that they were just using my trip as an excuse to visit London. We saw some of the sights together while Michel was busy practising. Everything was OK. I mean, I'd have preferred them not to be mere, but it wasn't so bad. They didn't crowd me. Though now, when I look back, I see what they really did was… mind me. Keep an eye on me. Make sure that whatever they couldn't help worrying might happen didn't happen.

'But it happened anyway. Despite them. Despite all the precautions they'd taken over the years; all the things they'd ever done to prevent me asking or checking or finding out or wondering or somehow, against the odds, remembering… why there were no photographs of me as a baby, why we had no relatives, why that was the first time I'd ever been to England, why… why… why…'

'Wednesday evening, it was. June twenty-third, 1999. Michel was still at the club, warming down after his second-round match. I'd gone back to the flat. Hadn't been there more than a few minutes when Sally arrived. She'd followed me from the club, she said, after waiting all afternoon for me to leave. She told me who she was. Then she told me who I was.