On his stomach, bent forwards, as he could tell from the slowly increasing pressure in his head.

Paddling backwards with his arms, Martin was able to grab the handrail and brake his forwards movement. His fingers clawed into the wood. He got a splinter beneath his thumbnail and thought he was hanging upside down, the rod now pressing against his thigh.

‘Ouch,’ he heard his wife’s voice, mingling with Timmy’s, although it had been so long since he last heard his son that he barely remembered it.

‘Water is very big ouch!’

He felt his own weight pulling him down, pressing against his wrists. Felt another stab, this time in the back. Felt his elbows double up.

His fingers come away.

He felt himself fall.

35

Julia touched her forehead and felt sweat. The television’s LED clock glowed red in the room: 00.35. She hadn’t slept for even an hour. The nightmare she’d just woken from, in which she’d seen her daughter, in sexy attire and half naked, get into a car with a strange man, had seemed far longer than that.

She wondered what had torn her from her sleep. She thought she’d heard a noise, a gusting wind at first, then a bang like a door slamming shut, but that could have been in her dream.

In all likelihood it was her full bladder stopping her from staying in bed.

She blindly felt for the switch of the night light. A dim, blueish glow helped her orient herself in the cabin.

She got up. Cold air poured in through the balcony door, which she always left open a crack at night. Having just been wrapped in a thick duvet and Egyptian cotton, now she was freezing and she wished she’d chosen flannel pyjamas to wear at night rather than a silk top with spaghetti straps.

She trudged to the bathroom as if in a daze, while the swell of the sea confused her sleepy sense of balance even further. The creak, groan and squeal of every single furniture joint, familiar by now, echoed the state she was in. She felt battered. Her mouth was dry, her head aching. She had to go to the loo and needed a sip of water, preferably flavoured with aspirin.

The soft carpet beneath her feet suddenly felt different. Julia turned on the desk lamp, bent down and spotted an envelope that had been pushed beneath the connecting door.

On the front it said ‘For Mama’ in Lisa’s unmistakeable squiggly handwriting. At once Julia was wide awake. A horrible, familiar feeling took her breath away.