Over the cliff edge and into the sea, the Jellyfish was a calm, perfect lozenge, smoothly lying on the undulating, lightly choppy water. Its surface gleamed whitely against the red–and-amber streaks of the early evening sky, and there was no sign of the killer tentacles hidden below the surface. I think we all noticed it, but there also didn’t seem to be anything moving on it at all. No sheep. No nothing. Not even a resting flock of seagulls disturbed that laser-cut polish of the surface. At this distance, it didn’t look a threat at all. It didn’t even look alive. The only clue was that it didn’t seem to move, while the wind-speckled tips of the waves flickered all around it.

From up here the geometric dark lines of the sunken houses and the line of mottled plastic debris along the edges of the coast bordered the Jellyfish like an ornate picture frame, as though it was the focal point of the bay. As though the creature was something we were drawn to watch, that we needed to stare at, something special. But those straight lines were also a barrier, jagged man-made intrusions into the water which spiked at and attacked the waves, breaking up their power and slowing them down. Protection for the land.

‘I don’t want to do it,’ said Lana. ‘It’s a stupid idea. I want to go to the castle and be safe.’

‘Off you go then,’ said James.

‘Shut your face. You know I can’t go by myself. And it’ll be dark soon.’

‘Well stop whinging then, because you’re giving me a headache.’

‘I think I might prefer not to kill it either,’ said Kate. ‘It’s just . . . you know . . . It did feed us and it did try to look after us.’

‘How did it try to look after us?’ said James, raising his eyebrows.

‘Well, OK . . . it didn’t kill us then, and it could have killed us straight away.’

‘It kept us there for ages, like it was playing with us, before starting to kill us. One by one,’ said James.

‘We have to, Kate,’ I said. ‘You know that.’

She nodded, miserably, staring out towards the sea.

‘I don’t think we would ever feel safe unless it’s dead,’ I added. ‘We’d always know it was out here, waiting.’