I remain faintly hopeful that she might have calmed down a bit by the time we get back, that we might be able to make out that it was a funny little turn of events, look at us, what are we like, Olea, but as we approach the jetty, it’s as if the volume is turned up all over again. She leaps back on land before I manage to stop her, her shoe gurgling, her clothes schlipp-schlapping, she runs towards the cabin wailing. I moor up, moving quickly and clumsily. By the time I make it up to the garden, she’s sitting on Kristoffer’s lap as he rocks her.

‘We had a little accident,’ I say.

Olea is shivering and shivering.

‘She was wearing her life vest,’ I say, I can hear how bad it all sounds, but she was wearing her life vest.

Mum and Stein have both come out onto the decking now, and Mum asks what happened, Olea’s soaking-wet clothing and hair, her missing shoe, her grazed knee. Olea regales them with what happened in one long, loud stream, her story interrupted only by her sobbing, she’s making more of it than she needs to, I think to myself, she shouts that she was lying down at the front of the boat, Aunt Ida said 132she was allowed, and then she fell overboard and Aunt Ida kept going. I want to tell her to be quiet, don’t say anything else, be quiet, but I can’t, I have to stand there and listen to her, her weeping and whining.

‘I didn’t keep going, Olea,’ I say, I’m standing with my arms by my sides, I’m on the verge of tears, I picture her there in the water, the feeling I had when I couldn’t see her, the blood on her knee.

‘You kept going?’ Kristoffer says.

‘Not on purpose,’ I say. ‘I couldn’t stop the boat.’

‘You need to be careful when you’ve got children on board, Ida,’ Mum says. ‘You’re really not that familiar with driving the boat.’

‘I’m well aware of that,’ I shout, a lump in my throat.

‘She could have drowned,’ Kristoffer says. ‘What exactly were you doing, anyway, were you sitting there texting or something?’

‘She was wearing her life vest,’ I repeat.

‘You can drown even when wearing a life vest, you know,’ Stein says, polishing his glasses. ‘They give people a false sense of security.’

‘Weren’t you drinking at lunchtime?’ Mum asks.

‘That was ages ago,’ I say. ‘Jesus.’

‘And I lost my shoe,’ Olea says. ‘My new shoe.’