Helga holds Maddy’s hand too and Maddy gives her a watery smile. ‘Thank you. At least you think so. Everyone else has told us off for trying to save him.’

‘So what happened then? Once the lifeguard got him?’ Helga asks.

‘They took Jamie straight off to hospital in an ambulance,’ Tor says.

‘Good. Don’t want him at any risk of secondary drowning,’ Helga says.

‘What’s that?’ Tor asks.

‘When you’ve been in water, even if you’ve been revived, a couple of days later, your lungs can fill up. They call it secondary drowning. It’s a real risk. They must have told you about that?’ She checks with Maddy, who nods, but she can tell it’s news to the others.

‘They mentioned that, but so far he’s OK. Hopefully he’ll be out by the end of the week.’

Helga nods and pulls Maddy into a hug.

‘You all saved him,’ Helga says decisively to them. ‘Together you saved him. That’s quite a thing. I’m so proud of you all.’

They eat some of Claire’s cake and the mood lightens, and Dominica changes the subject on to Linus.

‘I still want to find him for you, but I’m going to need more details,’ she says. ‘Emma has put a shout-out to all the groups who swim in Hampstead, but so far nobody has come forward.’

Helga sighs. She’s thought about it a lot – how Linus had been that day and how she’d felt when she’d seen him. And how entirely futile her feelings are. Because he has a family. A life. A wife.

‘I want you to stop.’ Helga sighs.

‘Stop? But—’

‘There’s no point in contacting Linus. If I’m going to move away.’

‘Move away?’

‘I’m thinking of going back to Denmark. To be near Mette. I’m warming to her idea of the retirement village. I’m not getting any younger. I can’t be a burden to other people.’

‘But you can’t move. What about the Sea-Gals?’ Dominica sounds upset.

‘You’ll be fine without me. It’s time to move on. To face up to the future.’

48

Breakfast of Champions

Maddy sits on the edge of her bed, watching Jamie sleep, remembering how she used to do the same thing when he was a baby. She reaches out and touches his hair, smoothing it away from his forehead. She and Trent used to lie with Jamie in between them, staring at him for hours.

She listens to his soft breathing, studying his face illicitly and the remnants of a black eye. His skin is still so sallow and dry, his frame terrifyingly thin and sunken.

She’s glad he can sleep. She’s finding it hard, not just because – having insisted on giving him her bed – she’s been trying to sleep on the sofa bed, but also because every time she closes her eyes, she sees him falling and she sits up, heart pounding.

Jamie was given fluids and loads of checks in hospital and yesterday they allowed him home. He slept all day and Maddy was scared to leave him, even for a minute. She stood outside in the corridor with Matteo, not wanting to let him into the flat when Jamie was sleeping. She was so grateful when he brought supper round – a delicious chicken and chorizo stew, which she knew he’d made with love, but Jamie only had a few mouthfuls of it.