By nine o’clock the lights were out, but Tilly’s thoughts kept her wakeful. As a rule, physical tiredness had her falling asleep the moment her head touched the pillow but tonight she tossed and turned, unable to forget DS Burns’ suspicions. He couldn’t just have plucked the idea out of the ether, she reasoned, so something, somewhere, must have started him questioning the accepted account of Gerry’s death.

Had some look-alike involved in criminal activity been wrongly identified as her late husband? Didn’t they say that everyone had a double? Tilly had never met her own, but there had been two instances she could recall when she had herself mistaken someone in the street for another person, so it was possible. Much more likely than Gerry having survived that night. Unbidden, her mind returned her to it, to that instant on the edge of darkness when she had asked him to watch their toddler because she was going below for a moment.

‘Okay, babe.’ She could see him at the wheel, the rakish, handsome face glancing from the binnacle to the child near his feet, his body silhouetted against the low smudge of mangroves looming ahead, and the two buoys that marked the entrance to the channel into the river mouth. Had it been as much her fault as his? She had known, hadn’t she, that he was concentrating on steering the boat? But it was only a minute of his time she had asked for – three at the very most. Was that too much to expect? She had been quick, her returning feet clearing the companionway a scant two minutes later, just in time to see Francie tumble overboard, like a chick falling from the nest.

Tilly had screamed her daughter’s name and heard Gerry’s startled, guilty cry, ‘Christ!’ – or was that the moment she had loaded her own guilt upon him? And a second later he had dived after the toddler while the Esmerelda had lost her forward motion and began wallowing in the darkness and the outrushing tide.

Chaos had ensued then so that now, in the aftermath, it was hard to disentangle the actual events from the terror that had surrounded them. She had rushed to the rail as he surfaced and he’d yelled something – ‘Get the wheel!’ perhaps – as he was swept sternwards. But she had ignored him, screaming her daughter’s name. She had seen him slash free the painter of the small boat they were towing, and a part of her gibbering mind understood that when he reached Francie he couldn’t hope to both hold her and swim against the tide. Straining her eyes, she had glimpsed the yellow of the bobbing life jacket and had breathed, ‘Oh, thank God! Thank God!’ as Gerry reached it.