Another day at the beach. It had sort of become somewhat of a daily ritual now. Sometimes it was really fun. We played, we ate, we laughed, we felt much better. Today was not one of these days. We weren't all miserable, we just felt a bit lonely. Even though we were surrounded by each other, there was a feeling that we were each alone, now that grandad had gone. Don't get me wrong, we didn't always feel like this. Sometimes we almost forgot, but the grief ebbed and flowed. There were amazing highs, devastating lows and, well, this. Just somewhere in between. We all looked out into the distance. The giant teal waves crashing onto the glowing gold sands, the sea foam dancing across it before following the wave back out to sea. Niall was playing with the sand, Ellie and I sat painting each other's nails, the grown ups were chatting, Renuka and Luke were sunbathing together as they held hands and Conrad was lying down on a towel, looking up into the pale blue, cloudless sky. Don’t look too close and we looked like we were having a perfect day out, but take a look at our faces, and everything changed. We all looked sullen and distant, trying to move on with our lives, but feeling like we were still being pulled back.

“There we go,” I said to Ellie, putting the bright purple nail polish brush back into its little glass pot and screwing the lid back on, “Your nails look amazing, if I do say so myself. And I do.”

“Why thank you, I agree.” she replied, smiling. I grinned back. We looked back at the group to see Conrad beckoning us over to where he was and pointing to the cave. ‘5 minutes’ I mouthed, pointing at our brightly coloured toenails that were yet to dry. He rolled his eyes but then smiled and nodded. ‘Should we get Renuka too?’ I mouthed again. He gave me a slightly hesitant thumbs up. I leant over backwards and tapped her on the foot gently. She sat up onto her elbows and put her sunglasses up onto her head, her gaze focused on us. “Ren, in a few minutes, once our nails have dried, Conrad wants to have another meeting in the cave. You up for it?” Ellie said. She nodded and told us to let her know when we were going, before replacing her shades and laying back on the towel. A couple minutes later, once we had done a thorough nail dryness examination, we alerted her again and signalled to Conrad to meet in the cave.

“Right,” he began, very matter of factly, “while we’ve been here, I have realised something.”

“Ooh yay, what is it, a motive, an alibi!” Ellie said, strangely bouncy and excited.

“Uh, no. It's kind of, bad,” Ellie's face dropped and ours followed suit, “I’ve realised that, no matter who the murderer is, it is going to be someone incredibly close and important to at least one of us. It's going to be someone we don't think we could live our lives without. And that's going to sway our decisions. Because we won't want anything bad to happen to them, you know, like prison, even though we all know they did something so bad to someone else we love and care about just as much.”

We all looked down at our laps, knowing that this was incredibly true, that Conrad was right. We would have to condemn someone that at least one of us loved so dearly that they would do anything to stop it.

He carried on,“But, what we have to remember is, that person, no matter how good and kind they are to you, has done something the complete opposite to someone else that matters just as much. Grandad. We have to solve this. For him. And we can't live our lives knowing that we didn't do everything we could to bring justice for him and his death. This is the only way that we can move on. We cannot hide anything that we know from each other, just because we know what it might mean for somebody we love. We just can't… So, yeah. That's what I wanted to say.” We sat in silence for a moment, before I took a deep breath and suddenly piped up, surprising even myself. “We need to make a pact. To always tell the truth. Not hide anything. Leave no stone unturned. And not let our emotions faze us. We have to.” I put my hand out into the centre and looked at them all, my eyes wide. They mirrored this expression back at me me before, one by one, adding their hands. Conrad then Ellie then Renuka. We all looked at each other. We knew what this meant now, and we couldn't take it lightly. One of us was going to be hurt and betrayed badly by someone we loved, but we couldn't prevent that, because we knew that this was what we had to do. For Grandad.