‘NO!’ I called, but it was too late – she was already heaving the boat around. My feet flailed helplessly, and I was aware of the fathoms of dark water beneath me – the fish and eels and monsters that lay, waiting, at the bottom of the sea. I imagined the Wyrm waking from a century-long slumber, sniffing at the water, turning hungrily in my direction, reaching up with its filthy claws, opening its jaws of needle-pointed teeth . . . Something brushed against my foot and I screamed. My breathing was ragged and choking – ‘Get me out, Mags! Get me OUT!’ The cold water and the terror were freezing my limbs so that my fingers could barely keep their grip on the rope.

‘Hold ON, Pet!’

I was the same as the lump of bacon rind, dangling there in the water: I was a piece of bait, and the foul jaws were about to close around me. Something was under my foot – something solid – I shrieked and kicked desperately against it, and found myself rising up against the hull. I pushed down again, pulling on the rope with numb hands, and I managed to get my head and chest over the side of the boat. I had one last terrifying vision of something dragging me back into the water before Mags grabbed my hand and hauled me all the way in.

We lay there in the bottom of the boat for a minute, catching our breath. The relief was overwhelming, and I felt tears welling up in my stinging eyes, sobs rising in my raw, burning throat. A shallow pool of seawater swilled gently up and down in the hull beneath us.

‘Sorry, Pet,’ Mags half-laughed. ‘Are you all right?’

‘All right,’ I managed to say.

She took off her dry jumper and helped me into it. ‘Keep warm,’ she said. ‘I’ll take us back in.’

Just before we got to shore, Michael Baron’s boat met us.

‘I heard screaming – did you catch a whopper?’ he asked. Then he saw me, all wet and shivering like a half-drowned kitten. ‘Oh, dear,’ he said. ‘Man overboard?’

I nodded miserably.

‘What happened?’

Mags answered: ‘I saw something in the water and I moved to get a better look and—’

‘And the boat wobbled, and Pet fell in?’ Michael laughed. ‘Poor little Pet. Never mind – you’ll be home and all warm and dry before you know it.’ Then he looked back at Mags. ‘What did you see?’

‘Sorry?’

‘In the water. What did you see?’

Mags looked embarrassed for a second. ‘I don’t really know. Just this huge dark shape under the surface. I’ve never seen anything like it before.’

I started shaking again, but it wasn’t because I was cold. A monster, I thought. There really was a monster out there – and it nearly got me.

Mags laughed a little. ‘I thought it was a whale or something.’