I’m a coward. I’d told her that I wanted to stay with her forever, but I don’t care enough to put my own life in danger. I turn round and follow the sound of the yapping dog. Occasionally I look back, but there’s no sign of her. I know that I’ve probably left her to drown, but she was so mad and so wild out there that perhaps it was what she wanted all along and she saw our meeting as a strange suicide pact. After ten minutes I hear more sounds, car engines and a woman’s voice. The shadows in the mist become solid. I stumble ashore at West Kirby. It’s mid-afternoon in a suburban town. People are shopping, and a couple of teenage girls are walking along the pavement giggling. Everything is normal. Except me. I’m shaking with cold and the remains of the terror I felt out there in the fog. I find a phone box and dial 999 and tell the coastguard that I think there’s a girl on the shore in the fog. I don’t give my name or hers. I’m ashamed that I turned back without trying to save her.

In the train on the way back to the chaos of my home I think that Vicky Macfarlane will haunt me for the rest of my life.

‘Good day, son?’ my mother says when I walk into the house.

‘Yeah,’ I say and go to my room. Another sort of betrayal and more guilt, but I can’t face her questions.

Time moves on. I pass my O levels, and my mam has a party for me to celebrate. I’m more settled at school now. The older you get, the easier it is to be different. The posh boys try to talk like me, which is laughable really, and I’m considered bright, possible Oxbridge material, so the teachers suck up to me too. I haven’t been back to Hilbre since I got lost in the fog with Vicky. I tell myself it’s because I’ve grown up, but really it’s because I still have nightmares about that day and I don’t want to be reminded that I left a girl to drown. I hope the nightmares will fade with time, but two years later when I’m coming up to my A levels they become even more intense. I realize that we’re approaching the anniversary of the incident and I decide that I have to face my anxiety. Perhaps Vicky survived and I’m going through all this angst for nothing.

I look up the Macfarlanes in the phone book and there they are, living in one of the big houses in Hoylake, close to the golf course, just as Vicky described. I get the bus there after school and stand in the street, looking in. The building isn’t as smart as I’d expected. It could do with a coat of paint and the garden is overgrown. I walk up the path and knock at the door, wondering what I’ll do if Vicky answers. But the woman who opens it is middle-aged. She’s dressed in a faded print dress that my mother wouldn’t be seen dead in and she looks tired and distracted.