I leant over the side of the boat to try to see if the bait was dropping deeply enough. She was right – I did need to let out a bit more line, and I probably needed to add a bit more weight too, to get it to sink rather than drifting with the current. I watched the white scrap of meat slowly disappearing through the depths of murky water.

Thinking about Pa’s sticking-out ears made me think about the hidden wedding photograph again. Perhaps I should mention it to Mags after all, I thought. It would be a mystery we could solve together. It might even help to close that strange gap that seemed to be opening up between us. If nothing else, it would stop thoughts of the Wyrm from slithering back into my head.

I was just about to say something when Mags shouted, ‘What the hell is THAT?’

The fishing line dropped through my fingers. I had already got myself into a state by thinking too much about the Wyrm, so the effect of this sudden panic was rather like being harpooned with fear. I stood up to try to see what she was looking at but, before I knew it, she leant forwards, the boat gave a great lurch, and I was sent tumbling sideways. I made a frantic grab at the side of the boat – ripping my nails on the splintery wood – but it was too late: I was flying into the water. I gasped at the air and closed my eyes tightly, but nothing could have prepared me for the jolt of freezing salt water as it slapped my face and body and closed in all around me. I felt the sudden, sodden weight of my clothes dragging me down, and somehow managed to wriggle out of my woollen sweater. It was Pa’s voice in my head, I think, calmly telling me what to do, but the rest of me was a terrified mess of panicking child. My legs were kicking helplessly in the water, my lungs were screaming. I could just hear Mags’s muted voice above the surface – ‘PET!’ – and I kicked out again, craning my face upwards until at last the muffling roar of water popped clear in my ears and I felt air on my face. I took an enormous gasping breath, my eyes and nose and throat burning with salt-water.

‘Pet – hold on!’ Mags was reaching down towards me, and my slippery-fish hand found hers, strong and warm. But she couldn’t pull me up high enough and the boat rocked towards me; she had to let go and I dropped back into the water again. ‘Hold on to this!’ She threw me a loop of coarse rope and I clung on to it. ‘I’ll move us closer to the sandbank, Pet, so you can stand up and climb back in.’