The police found her in the shallows on a cloudless summer day; her body must have been rolling for hours, this way and that in the surf. Her hair spread like seaweed. Naked. Thin. He would like to tell them that it wasn’t her in the morgue, with a bruised face and mauve mouth. Stitches on one pale palm. She had gone. He had put his mouth next to the cold ear, crystallised salt on its rim. He had wanted to beg for forgiveness.