Perhaps I had mistaken what had happened. There might still be a pulse beating in her wrists. I thrust my hands into the water and tried desperately to lift her, but her head arched back and the sides of the copper bath were too high. As the taps continued to pour down a torrent, I pushed my arms deeper until I was half submerged. ‘Lorelei!’ I shouted again, fighting against the radio in the corner as it blared her voice, the lines from a play recorded long ago.

Her body against mine as I wrenched her up with all my strength, I cried out her name for the last time. Then her face burst through the surface, her mouth open, as if she were gasping for air, and I stared into her eyes, waiting for them to turn to me. I stared from one to the other.

But there was no breath, no flush of colour on her cheek. And, as I felt it against me, I knew her body was as cold as stone. In that moment, with her in my arms, I collapsed downwards, my hair trailing in the water like hers, some of the strands intertwining and drifting in the tide. At the last I held her against me, feeling my arms shake, feeling numb, before I let her slip back under. Nothing but the icy water now.

The radio crackled as I stumbled out of the room, down the stairs and out the front door. ‘And what have you been to me, my love? What have you been to me?’

It was, I suppose, an hour later that I stood again on that landing. The floor was still awash but the radio was broadcasting a man’s voice. ‘In readiness for tomorrow’s magnificent celebrations for Liberation Day …’ I didn’t know when the programme had changed.

The house seemed full of men now. One asked me a question and I think I told him the answer. And Nick was there too – someone must have called him, though it hadn’t been me. I was thankful that they had: just having his familiar presence there made it feel like I was still in this world.

‘Did you touch her?’ It was an older man with square glasses and white hair, thin as a rake, who was speaking to me. He gently guided me away from the doorway so that I couldn’t see into the bathroom. ‘Did you touch her?’

I turned my bewildered eyes to Nick, wishing that he – or anyone, really – could answer the questions for me. I struggled to form any words: it was as if they had been locked away from me. ‘I … I tried to pull her out,’ I mumbled.

‘You tried to lift her out?’

‘Yes,’ I said. My mind was focusing, fighting through the shock of the body. ‘How did she … Did someone do that?’