When Lenni was five years old, she fell off a cliff. One moment she was scampering over the springy grass, her hair blowing in the onshore breeze and her little skirt flapping around her skinny legs, and the next moment she’d completely disappeared. They’d only looked away for a moment.

‘Where did she go?’ Patrick said, gripping onto Shona while frantically glancing around. He was trying to sound calm, but his insides had ignited.

‘She was chasing gulls,’ Shona replied, also scanning around for their daughter. Her hand slowly went up to her mouth as Patrick tore off towards the edge of the cliff, calling Lenni’s name. She’d been drilled about going too close to the edge and they’d only stopped a moment to check the dog’s paw because he’d been limping. When they looked up, Lenni had gone.

‘Lenni…’ Shona screamed. ‘El–ea–nor, where are you?’ Her heart thrashed inside her chest as she ran to join her husband. He was standing frozen at the cliff edge with his hands clawing at his head.

‘Get help!’ he yelled back at Shona. ‘She’s gone over.’

Shona could hardly bear to look down. Even if she’d survived the drop, she’d have landed on craggy rocks. Through narrowed eyes, Shona forced herself to lean over and look. She saw her little girl lying on her back in the only patch of soft sand within the expanse of barnacle-encrusted rocks. She was staring up at them, giggling.

‘I was chasing the gulls,’ she said with a croaky voice, but then her laughs turned to bubbling cries and she held out her arms to be picked up.

Somehow, Patrick scrambled down the rocks, dropping more than climbing. ‘Lenni, oh my darling baby, what have you done?’ He leapt over the rocks to get to the oasis of sand. He hurled himself onto his knees and ran his hands over her body. ‘Does it hurt anywhere? Can you move your legs?’ Then he saw the blood streaming from her head.

Lenni squinted up at her mother on the clifftop. She gave a little wave through her waning sobs, half sitting up. ‘I’m OK, Daddy,’ she said, allowing herself to be scooped up and cuddled, the blood dripping from behind her ear. ‘I wanted to fly like the seagulls.’

‘But you can’t fly, darling. You don’t have wings.’

Patrick realised that he was also crying. He buried his face in his daughter’s sandy hair, breathing in the scent of her. It was the sweetest smell in the world, but he needed to get her to hospital. Meantime, Shona was running along the clifftop, scrambling down the shingle track to the beach. She was standing at the point where the rocks met the expanse of sand beyond.

‘Bring her to me, Pat,’ she called out, watching, barely able to breathe as he carried their precious little girl to her. When they finally reached her side, she took hold of Lenni, cradling her tight.

‘I’m OK, Mummy. It was that bird’s fault.’ Lenni coughed and winced.

‘We need to get her to hospital,’ Patrick said, carrying her back to the house and the car.

Later, after Lenni had been given stitches in the zigzag gash behind her ear, they came home with a clean bill of health but a whole load of guilt for having taken their eyes off their daughter. Lenni was becoming more and more accident-prone, more fanciful and absent-minded, and far less aware of dangers than they thought normal. She was so different to Claire and Jason. Just last week Shona had found Lenni about to push a screwdriver into the plug socket because she was pretending to be a handyman. Days before that she was playing hospitals with her dolls and a packet of aspirin. She was about to crunch all the tablets up. So that evening Shona and Patrick made a pact. She would always be supervised by an adult.

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Maggie was singing along to the radio to stay awake. Rain had long since fallen asleep, stretched out in the back of the campervan. She wasn’t wearing a seat belt, but Maggie thought it would be worse to suffer a grouchy Rain for the whole of the next day if she didn’t get any sleep at all.

She mumbled the words to some eighties song she vaguely remembered, no doubt from the village disco. She grinned at the memory of the weekly event that got them all so excited. Those two hours on a Friday night were certainly the highlight of her week. She and Claire would shuffle around the edge of the hall, eyeing up the boys who went to the posh school near Wadebridge, waiting for them to ask for a dance. Everyone was holding out for the slow tunes, hoping to get a snog.

She could almost smell the old village hall – a blend of dusty floors, ancient curtains and disinfectant in the grotty loos. Afterwards, she’d sleep over at the farm with Claire, gossiping until the early hours. But then they became too cool for the local disco, especially when the younger kids infiltrated. She’d heard from a friend that Lenni went once, though she could hardly believe she was allowed – such a shy little creature, who probably stood glued to the wall in terror all night.

Maggie approached Exeter and the end of the M5 with a smile on her face. The campervan stopped vibrating as she slowed, taking the exit for the A30. She’d had little sleep before they left – partly down to preparing for the trip, but also because Gino had got talking when he came home from the nightclub he owned.

Maggie’s stomach clenched when she remembered his words. ‘I’m not sure things are working out the way I want,’ he’d said.

Working out between you and Rain, she’d thought bitterly, but didn’t say. Subsequently, she’d loaded the camper with more possessions than she’d normally take away for a week, deciding not to say anything to Rain. She didn’t want her to worry that they could be homeless and virtually penniless yet again.

Rain stirred. ‘Are we nearly there?’

Maggie glanced in the rear-view mirror. ‘Another hour and a half to go. Maybe two, depending on traffic. There’s some water in the fridge.’ She heard Rain shuffling about and then silence as she swigged from a bottle. Then she felt her daughter’s warm breath on her ear as she climbed into the front.

‘It’s going to be all right this week, isn’t it?’

‘Of course,’ Maggie replied, not used to hearing insecurity from Rain. ‘You’ll adore Claire, and she’s got a teenage son too.’

‘He’s a dork.’

‘That’s a bit harsh.’ Maggie’s heart sank. She was hoping the holiday would do Rain good, perhaps strengthen their relationship which, she had to admit, hadn’t been the best over the last few years. ‘You haven’t even met him yet.’

‘We’ve messaged. He didn’t have much to say for himself. I looked at his photos. Trust me, he’s a dork.’ Rain switched on to another radio station, turning it up loud, and Maggie couldn’t help wishing that her daughter was still asleep.