**Internal planning completed.

The name was Daniel.

Not a stranger.

Not some man from before my son.

Daniel — my son's oldest friend.

The best man we had already booked for the wedding.

The man who had stood in my kitchen three weeks ago eating my roast chicken and asking Nadia if she was excited about the dress fitting.

I heard her say it and I felt the beach tilt under me.

"Daniel," I repeated.

Not a question.

Just the word, sitting there in the air between us.

Nadia nodded.

She was still holding my cardigan closed at her throat with both hands.

"How long?" I asked.

"We were together for two years.

Before Marcus." She glanced at my son when she said his name — a quick, careful look, like she was checking he was still there.

"Daniel and I ended things eight months before Marcus and I met.

I thought it was finished.

I thought—" She stopped.

Swallowed.

"He didn't think it was finished."

Marcus hadn't moved.

He was still crouched in the sand in front of her, and I could see the line of his jaw from where I stood, and it was rigid.

"He started coming to the flat," Nadia said.

"At first it was just to talk.

Then it wasn't just talking."

"Did he hurt you?" I asked.

She looked down at her own arms.

The cardigan covered them now.

"Not always on purpose.

That's what he said.

That's what he always said — that he didn't mean it, that he just got frustrated, that I made him—" She stopped again.

"I know how that sounds."

"It sounds like a lie he told you," I said.

Something moved across her face.

Relief, maybe, or the beginning of it.

"Marcus found out four months ago," she said.

"He wanted to go to the police straight away.

I asked him not to.

I wasn't ready.

I kept thinking if I just — if we just got through the wedding, if we just got far enough away from it, it would stop feeling so close."

I looked at my son.

"You've known for four months."

"Mum—"

"You've sat across from that man at my dinner table."

"She asked me not to say anything." His voice was low and careful.

"She asked me.

What was I supposed to do?"

I didn't answer that.

I wasn't sure I had an answer.

"He's coming to the wedding," Nadia said quietly.

"He's still coming.

He doesn't know that Marcus knows.

He thinks—" She pressed her lips together.

"He texted me last week.

He said he'd been thinking about us.

That watching me plan the wedding was difficult for him.

That he hoped I understood what I was giving up."

The sun was still hot.

Timmy was somewhere behind me, laughing at something in the waves.

The world was carrying on in all directions and I was standing on a beach being told that a man I had fed and welcomed and laughed with had done this to the girl my son loved.

"He's not coming to the wedding," I said.

Nadia looked up at me.

"He is not coming to my son's wedding," I said again.

"And we are going to talk — properly, all of us — tonight.

Inside.

Away from the beach."

Marcus finally stood up.

He put his hand on Nadia's shoulder and she leaned into it, just slightly, the way you lean into something solid when you've been standing in wind for a long time.

"There's more," he said to me.