‘What are you doing?’ It’s the security guard, with a flashlight, running towards them.

‘I can’t lose him again,’ Maddy says. ‘I can’t, Tor.’

‘No!’ Tor cries, but it all happens in a split second.

Maddy has taken flight.

46

Eels

There’s long enough during the time that she’s falling through the air for Maddy to register the barnacle-encrusted black ironwork under the pier and for her to remember Helga’s stories about the eels that live in the water. And then she hits the water with a thump so hard it’s like hitting a wall.

She’s under the water for ages and she kicks furiously to the surface. Her lungs are screaming as she comes up and gasps for air. It’s freezing, and she’s hyperventilating, but she hardly feels it. One of her sandals slips off as she’s lifted up on the swell.

‘Jamie,’ she shouts, as soon as she can get her breath back, but she sucks in sea water and she gasps and coughs. Her hair is in her eyes and she brushes it away. ‘Jamie?’

The moonlit sea seems vast and dark. She’s never felt tinier – or more afraid. Her body is fizzing with adrenaline and her teeth are chattering as she scans the water.

She becomes vaguely aware of someone shouting in the distance and she looks up to see Tor and the security guy she’d outrun leaning over the railings. Tor is shouting, but Maddy can’t make out the words. The security guard throws down an orange life ring and she swims over to it, grabbing it with difficulty.

Tor is screaming louder now but she can only hear it faintly, but she’s pointing and Maddy follows her outstretched arm and for a split second, she thinks she can see a hand above the surface of the water, but in an instant her view is obscured by the swell.

She swims, kicking off her other sandal so that she can go faster, dragging the buoyancy float and then she sees bubbles on the surface of the water and, taking a deep breath, goes under, groping in the dark, her eyes open, burning in the salt water. She comes up again, choking and spluttering, but beneath her, her bare foot touches something. There’s something – or someone below her. She goes under again, her ears in agony with the pressure, but she forces herself deeper, her arms outstretched, groping as she internally prays. Please let it be him. And this time she feels something that feels like hair, but it’s too late. She has to breathe.

She comes up for air, rearing out of the water, her lungs screaming and she treads water for a moment, then gathering herself, she goes back down again.

It’s Jamie. It must be Jamie.

She’s fighting against the current and she can’t see anything, apart from a dark shadow, then clawing around, she catches hold of cloth? A hoodie?

She yanks with all her might.

She’s got him.

It takes all she has to get below him and push him upwards, up and up through the dark swell, and she’s reminded of giving birth to him, that all-consuming need to push. As if her life depended on it. She’s screaming underwater with the effort and she doesn’t think she’s going to make it, but then she breaks the surface, gasping for air and swallowing seawater and coughing, her strained lungs on fire. Jamie slips away from her and she grabs onto the float, hauling it under his arms and flopping his body over the top. His eyes are closed. His lips are blueish in the faint light.