The sun rises on that side and, if you get up early enough, you can watch the night turning purple, orange and red before it fades to blue.
…
I say: ‘If you get up early enough’ – but the only times I’ve seen that is when I stayed up through the night. I was younger then…
Julius: I’ve watched the sun rise on that cliff – I think most tourists have. If not there, then you can see the sun set from the beach on the other side. It’s one of the top-ten things they list in the guidebook for people to experience. But once you’ve seen one sunrise, you’ve seen them all.
Emma: When I saw what was on the clifftop that morning, I almost laughed. There was a single traffic cone sitting close to the edge. That was how they’d marked the place where Dad had fallen. I thought about all the people who complain about health and safety culture in the UK – and what they’d make of it. Would even the solo cone be too much for them?
There was a man standing close to that cone with his back to me. I could see the smoke from his cigarette drifting away and assumed it was someone from the hotel who had snuck out for a smoke. It was only when I got across to the cliff edge that I realised I knew him.
I honestly think he was wearing the same black trousers from nine years before. They were the sort you’d wear to an office – but way too baggy on him. He had on this plain white shirt but had sweated through the sides and it was all so familiar. The same man wearing the same clothes – but nine years apart.
Jin turned to me, looked me up and down, and then spun back to the ocean. ‘Ms McGinley,’ he said. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’
I think he was trying to make a joke, but it didn’t feel like that.
‘Jin’ (Galanikos head of police): I didn’t think they would ever be back. Would you, after what happened the last time?
Emma: I never knew whether ‘Jin’ was his first name, last name, or a nickname. It was pronounced like the drink and that’s what he told everyone to call him. He was the head of police when Alan had fallen and it looked like he was still doing the job.
We were standing side by side and I followed his stare along the coast towards the cliff from where Alan fell. It’s a little further away from the hotel, where there’s a path that winds down to the beach below. Alan landed on rocks, while Dad had apparently been found on the sand.
Neither of us said anything for a while, but it did feel as if there was a connection. Like we were in the same place and thinking the same thing.
Then he said it.
Jin: ‘Here we go again.’
Emma: It was flippant but not mean. I knew where he was coming from.
After Alan fell, Jin got a lot of abuse for apparently ‘botching’ the investigation. I imagine that all took a long time to die down. He might have thought his career was over. Then we come back after all this time and, yeah… Here we go again.
Jin: I told her what time her dad had been found – and asked where she was for the hours before that.
Emma: I said I was in a bar. He wanted to know if I was with anyone, so I said ‘yes’, without giving a name. He didn’t push for more and didn’t write anything down. It wasn’t a serious inquisition.
Jin: I can’t talk about who was a suspect and who wasn’t.
Emma: I asked why there was no fence.
Jin: It’s never the locals who fall.
Emma: I didn’t like it when he said that. It was dismissive, as if the tourists who come to the island don’t mean anything. That they’re the only ones stupid enough to fall.
Jin: Who would pay for this fence? Do you know how long it would have to be? If you don’t want the danger, don’t go near the edge. Everyone who lives here manages to figure that out.
Emma: He’d annoyed me, which is why I told him that he’d have to do some work to find a real suspect this time. I knew what I was saying. I wanted a reaction, but he continued staring out over the ocean.
Jin: She knows nothing.
Emma: When Alan fell, the only named suspect was Dad. That wasn’t based on anything particular, simply that there was a small discrepancy about times – and that Jin didn’t want to do his job. There was no evidence, which is why no charges were ever laid.
It had made the news back home and, because Dad had been named, the rumours took a long time to go away. It’s no wonder people say the investigation was botched. It ended up concluding that Alan had simply fallen – but, by then, there was already talk about business feuds and the like.
Jin: Your system is not our system. People said we had a small mentality, that your way is better, but there was no problem with my investigation. No problem at all.
Emma: As soon as Jin finished that one cigarette, he moved onto the next. I said I thought Dad must have been pushed. It was mainly because I couldn’t see a way Dad would have fallen, not after what happened with Alan. Why would he be right on the edge? Nothing made sense.
Jin: I told her: ‘Maybe he jumped?’
Emma: There was no reason for Dad to do that. He was happy, not suicidal. It was offensive that Jin even said it. He then added: ‘Funny you seem to know what I think’.
I didn’t know what to say about that. It felt like a challenge: a way of telling me to stay out of his way. I was ready to go, but then he called me back.
Jin: I said I’d seen Lander that morning – because I had.
Emma: I know what he was trying to do when he said that. He wanted to show that he still held something over me, even though he didn’t.
I’d not heard Lander’s name in a long while and I waited for a moment, wondering if he had something else to say. Jin gave me a card and told me to call if I thought of anything. He said he hoped Dad recovered – and I walked away.
Jin: That was the first time anyone mentioned a push. It was her, on that cliff, the morning after.
Chapter Six
THE SMELL OF HOPE OR SEWERS
Emma: I walked down the path, away from the edge and that stupid cone. I thought about heading back into the hotel, but it was late in the morning and the scent of the village was in the air. It’s always the smells that get me.
Not long after I’d been released, I’d gone into a mall where the cleaners were busy working. They were using this detergent that must have been the same one from prison. I was frozen in front of the door, unable to shift until someone asked if I could move. I bet I could smell that again in thirty years and it would still send me right back in time.
That’s what it was like when I was outside the hotel. I was helpless to do anything other than follow my nose down the slope towards the centre of the village. It was déjà vu the entire way, remembering how I used to feel making this journey. I was a young woman then, a girl even, and I had my whole life ahead of me. This time, it felt like so much of my life was behind me. I’d wasted those best years and, if anything, gone backwards.