To keep up competition, Tovah consistently ranked the pilot skills of the five Currents and five Crustys. Kerry consistently came up fourth or fifth in the rankings, but site 4B was her jinx. The first time she’d landed there, she’d had to make three attempts. First she’d come in too high, and on the second attempt a gust knocked her off course. The next time she’d had no problems on approach, but one of the rear wheels had hit a rock, ripping the tyre off its rim, causing jarred spines and minor damage to the underside of the carbon fibre tub.

‘Just land on the main runway,’ James suggested. ‘Tovah will moan, but I just wanna get dry ASAP.’

But Kerry didn’t share James’ rebellious nature. ‘I don’t back off,’ she told James. ‘Program the coordinates.’

James wiped moisture off the little screen in the back of Kerry’s seat and used gloved fingers to dial up the coordinates of site 4B.

‘Can you see that on your screen?’ James asked.

‘Roger,’ Kerry said, as she flipped a switch to take manual control for landing.

The microlight swept over the brightly lit main landing strip, close enough for James to envy two gliders already safely on the ground. James had never had to make so much as a second pass on any of thirty-plus landings, and suspected Tovah would have let him skip this extra challenge if he’d been at the controls.

Kerry gained height as the microlight banked right over the hill at the island’s centre.

‘Visibility’s horrible,’ Kerry complained, wiping her visor for the thousandth time that night.

It was too dark to see anything other than the outline of the ground. 4B was a kilometre from the main landing strip. Less than a minute at flying speed. They skimmed over the hostel buildings at seventy-five metres. Kerry flipped on a xenon landing light in the nose as the unlit grass strip came into a view cut up by streaking rain.

James thought Kerry was a touch low as they approached. But the speed and angle were good and the wind – which could cause problems for even the most experienced pilot in a plane weighing less than its passengers – had temporarily died down.

‘Forty metres,’ James said, as he watched the strip come into view.

He leaned over slightly so that he could see Kerry’s hands on the controls, and she seemed calm. It was only when they were thirty metres from touchdown that he realised that Kerry was too low, perhaps overcompensating for previous attempts where she’d landed hard.

He thought they’d ridden their luck, but five metres from touchdown, James heard a sharp crack. He glanced behind, realising that they’d clipped tree branches. The microlight pulled violently to the right. Kerry had to make a split-second decision, between throttling up and flying around or risking a sideways landing.