Ruby-May is in the sea, choking and sinking, splashing at the surface with the flat of her hands, sobbing and swallowing water. She’s wearing a white dress and it billows around her in the black water, twisting about her feet. She’s panicking.

‘I’m coming!’

She can’t see a life-ring. In desperation she climbs over the rail, ready to jump in. Ruby-May sinks below the surface and Amy screams.

She wakes, drenched in sweat and rigid with terror. Next to her, Matt mutters and turns away. Her heart is pounding so hard it hurts. There’s a moment, while the adrenaline is coursing through her, when she still feels as if she’s there, the salt spray on her lips, the cold breath of the sea on her skin, her daughter drowning. As her pulse slows, it seeps into her like some awful poison – the knowledge that Ruby-May is dead. She wraps her arms around herself. It’s as if some essential part of her has been hacked off: a hand, a foot, her leg; and, like a phantom limb, she still feels the pain, although there is nothing left except the bleeding stump.

She takes a breath, preparing to get up and make herself a cup of tea, when she realizes that there is someone else in the room. She holds herself still and stares hard, as if through sheer willpower she’ll be able to make out who it is. I must be imagining it. It’s probably nothing – a towel hanging over the back of the door, one of the children sleep-talking, the old barn shifting as the timbers contract, now it’s grown chillier. I’m disoriented by the nightmare. She moves to the edge of the bed, her toes touching the rough mat.

A floorboard creaks, just a few feet away from her. Whoever it is, they’re right there. She can hear them breathing.

‘Theo?’ She doesn’t think it’s her son. They’re much bigger. A man.

‘Amy, darling.’

The tension leaves her in a rush and she stands abruptly, seizes a shawl and wraps it round herself.

‘Dad? What are you doing here?’

Matt sighs and mumbles something, and then sits bolt upright.

‘What the fuck?’

She takes her father’s elbow and tries to steer him out of the room.

‘What’s he doing here?’

Matt snaps on the bedside light and she blinks. Her father’s hair is uncombed and he looks grizzled; there are watery pouches beneath his eyes.

‘There was someone in my room,’ he says. ‘I woke up – I’d forgotten to write in my journal – and I realized there was someone there.’

‘Who the hell would be in your room?’

‘He was standing at the bottom of my bed, watching me. I waited and then he left. I heard him walk down the stairs.’