So he buried himself deep into suicide conspiracies. He became an expert on cluster points, where you got a spate of suicides in one place, very often teenagers who all knew each other. There was a small town in Wales where dozens had done it within months of each other, and Ben knew all the stats for that place, comparing them to the numbers for South Queensferry. He spent countless hours on websites and online chatrooms, dabbling in stuff that even David Icke might baulk at. Satanic cults, mind-altering drugs, school vaccinations, food additives, computer games, side effects of prescription medication, washing powder, the signal from mobile-telephone masts causing depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts.

She looked at the leaflet in her hand. This was his latest crusade, the Queensferry Crossing, as it had been named. The new road bridge across the Forth was being built just to the west of the current one, hitting land right next to the marina where Ben had worked until recently. He’d stumbled across the idea on some crackpot website that either something in their internal communication network was sending signals into the ether that changed the wiring of kids’ brains, or there was something in the building materials giving off a gas that poisoned everyone’s minds. It was ridiculous, of course, and she’d told him so umpteen times, but he never heard. She understood, it was hard to hear the truth, that Logan just killed himself and there was no answer, no resolution. No comfort. Easier to believe that the government or building contractors or phone companies were to blame.

Ben’s leaflet had quotes from building trade ‘insiders’ confirming that dangerous, cheap non-EU chemicals were being used, and that there had been other clusters of suicides at major building projects using the same method in the Far East.

Ellie closed her eyes and tried to remember their wedding day. Tight-skinned and happy, the two of them waltzing in a small marquee, their lives ahead of them, Logan not even an idea then, let alone a dead one. All she could see was Sam standing on the bridge, his hands tight on the railing, his body swaying back and forth. Her eyes went to the ceiling. Logan’s room was directly above them, if Sam walked around they would likely hear him.

Ben took another sip of tea and made a face at the taste. ‘I really need to get going, deliver these.’

Ellie wondered what the neighbours thought of Ben’s steady stream of lunatic leaflets through their letterboxes. To begin with maybe there was some sympathy, he’d lost his son after all. But now, six months later, wasn’t it time to move on? But it was never time to move on, that’s what she’d come to realise.

‘Stay a minute.’ She went over to him and touched his arm. ‘Sit down. I feel like we haven’t talked in ages.’

‘If you’re going to go on about the leaflets, I don’t want to hear it.’

‘I won’t.’

He sat down, the same chair Sam had been in a few minutes before. Ellie listened for noise from upstairs, but there was nothing. The washing machine chugged away in the corner of the kitchen, throwing Sam’s trousers and pants around.

She knew she should tell Ben. Keeping it to herself could only push them apart. But she had to figure out what it all meant, had to understand the gift she’d been given first, before she could share it.

‘Remember when we saw that porpoise, when Logan was little,’ she said.

He shook his head. ‘I remember.’

‘He was three, I think?’

Ben nodded. ‘Three and a half.’

‘He kept saying “dolphink”, “dolphink”.’

‘Then you said, “No, it’s a porpoise”.’

Ellie laughed. ‘And then he wouldn’t stop saying “purpose”, “purpose”.’

They were both smiling now. Their little purpose. Ellie tried to think when she’d last seen Ben smile.

‘Our little porpoise,’ she said.

Ben sighed, the smile gone. ‘Yeah.’

Ellie looked up at the ceiling, then out at the Forth. ‘What if we got a second chance?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Imagine we got to live our lives over,’ Ellie said. ‘What would you do different?’

‘Don’t, Ellie.’

‘Go on.’

‘I can’t do this. I don’t want to hear you talk like this.’

‘But if we got a second chance?’

Ben stood up, knuckles on the table. ‘There are no second chances. You know that. Stop talking this way, please.’

She got up too, hands out, pleading. ‘What are we going to do, Ben? There’s no end to this, is there?’

He shrugged and headed for the door.

‘No,’ he said. ‘It never ends.’

She heard the front door open and close.

She breathed in and out a few times, trying to get the hang of it, then looked at the ceiling.

She went upstairs and opened the door to Logan’s room, careful not to make any sound.

Sam was sleeping on top of Logan’s bed, hands under his cheek, face slack. Ellie went to a drawer and took out a blanket, draped it over him. She pushed his fringe away from his face, tucked a stray strand of hair behind his ear. She let the backs of her fingers rest on his cheek for a while, feeling the movement of his breathing, watching his chest rise and fall, peaceful for now.

There are no second chances.

6

Inchcolm Terrace was a suburban cul-de-sac like any other. Fifties-built detached houses, pebbledash, steep roofs, garages. Family homes with trampolines and scooters in the small gardens.

Ellie walked along, checking the numbers. She stopped at number 23, Sam’s place, same as all the rest. It had taken ten minutes to walk here from her house at the shore, up The Loan then nipping in to the right, easy enough to find. She’d never been up this street before, but then you wouldn’t unless you knew someone who lived here, it wasn’t a road to anywhere.

She’d checked the phone book, only one McKenna in South Queensferry. She thought about phoning but didn’t, this felt like a conversation that needed to be face to face. She wasn’t even sure what she was going to tell them about Sam, if anything. Where do you start? But she wanted to see their faces, see the family he’d come from, the people who had created and shaped him. Were they worried about him? Had he shown any of the signs of mental-health problems? Where did they think he was right now?

She dragged a hand down her face, felt the slackness of her skin, then walked through the gate and up the path. She rang the doorbell and waited. Nothing. Rang again. Silence. She looked at the neighbouring houses, wondered about curtains twitching but didn’t see any movement. She rang a third time.

She tried the front door. It opened and she leaned in.

‘Hello?’

She stepped inside. Coats were piled on the end of the banister, shoes on a low shelf unit by the door. Looked like four people, including a girl. Perfect little family unit – mum, dad, son and daughter.

She closed the door behind her.

‘Hello?’

A bowl on the hall table with car keys, small change, golf balls, Post-its, a phone charger. The stuff of life. She couldn’t picture Sam as the golfer, it must be his dad. Sanded wooden floor, an IKEA runner rug on top, she recognised it from last year’s catalogue.

She looked up the stairs. Thought about going up there, wondered which room was Sam’s, if it looked anything like Logan’s. What about the sister, was she a chintzy pink princess or old enough to be a moody emo by now?

She heard a noise, maybe a voice, from the direction of the kitchen.

‘Hello, the door was open. Is someone there?’

She crept down the hall, listening. That noise again, a grunt. She got to the kitchen doorway.

‘Holy shit.’

Lying slumped against the fridge was a man with a kitchen knife in his gut. Stocky, receding hairline, in his forties. His eyes were closed and his forehead creased with deep furrows. Blood was soaked into his white shirt and black trousers, and had pooled around him on the tiled floor. He let out a pained breath.