He remembered the wall of scales, the surging wave, the needle-like teeth. Whether or not its preferred prey was fish, it would make short work of him; a couple of bites then swallowed. They didn’t have giant sea snakes in Southall. Perhaps he should think harder about trying to get home, rather than toying with the notion that he might have finished his formal education, moved out of his parents’ house and become independent in one giant, irrevocable step.

He forced his legs to work, getting them under him, standing him up. He retrieved his pagh and rolled it back on neatly, tucking the frayed end in. He resheathed his kirpan, and picked up the net.

By the time he got back to the fire, the first of the others had arrived: Elena, and her cousin, Luiza. They looked defeated as well as exhausted.

‘I guess it didn’t work.’

Luiza sat down hard and stared into the heart of the fire. Elena shook her head in warning and mouthed something at him he didn’t catch. The meaning of it was clear enough, though. Their stay here would be longer than a single day.

He didn’t know what he should feel about that. He didn’t dare ask himself, in case the answers weren’t what he anticipated. They were all going to have different responses to an open door back to London: what he should do – what they should all do – was obvious. And yet no one here was going to scold him to do what was expected of him.

He knew Mama wanted to go. He didn’t know what the Romanian women wanted, so he made some suitable noise of consolation and threw some more broken branches on to the fire.

Stanislav was the next to appear. He jerked his head for Dalip to follow him, and they walked together down to where Mary was still fishing. As they went, the older man took the makeshift net from him, examined it with an approving nod, and handed it back.

‘They tried,’ he said. ‘They tried all kinds of incredible things. The door would not appear to them. It was just rock.’

That was, apparently, all that could be said about it. They tried, they failed, they came back.

‘The sea serpent came up the deep part of the river,’ said Dalip. ‘It was chasing the fish on the tide. I … got quite close to it. Closer than I’d like.’

‘You survived.’

‘Yes. It’s probably something we don’t want to meet on a dark night, though.’

‘Agreed. Was it big?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Was it impressive?’

Dalip caught the inflexion in his voice, and then the twinkle in his eye. ‘Yes. That too. I never imagined such a thing could even exist. Yet, if I hadn’t been trying very hard to get out of its way, I could’ve reached out and touched it.’