I stand with my hands on my hips and look over at Lou’s house, where she’s gathered her three kids by the front door, painted a glossy mission brown a month ago. The rain falls at an angle so from the knees up I’m sheltered by the roof, while my feet are shiny wet. In the living room behind me, under the slung blanket, Sarah presses the dome-shaped plastic popper on a board game, calling out the number that shows on the dice after each clack. The twins giggle.

Mark continues to stride forward, pushed and yanked, goaded by a current that strengthens before my eyes. The right choice, I think, to keep his feet on the ground as long as possible. On his side of the road, the water is surging towards Lou’s house, but there’s a strange current forming on the other side, heading in the opposite direction. A rip, in floodwater. I didn’t think that was possible. I hope they see it.

Lou is wearing a sleeveless orange jersey dress I borrowed once, when it was new. She’s top-heavy, full of milk, and the dress strains across her chest. She rests Jemima above her hip, as the baby, in only a cloth nappy, squirms to be free. Joe holds his treasured Paddington Bear in one hand, and a scrunch of Lou’s hem in the other. Daniel, eleven months older than Joe, stands beside a cardboard box doubtless crammed with photographs and the kids’ baby books. I wave at Lou and she waves back.

Mark swims the last thirty feet on a diagonal to navigate the current, keeping his head above the fast-flowing water, avoiding floating branches and furniture sucked out of smashed windows. He pulls himself up onto what still shows of Lou’s railway sleeper path, tan bark and leaves sticking to his back. She steps forward, and wraps her free arm around him. Mark places one hand on Jemima’s back as he talks to Lou.

After a minute, he disappears into the garage and comes out with Andrew’s surfboard, which he slides into the water, urging Daniel and Joe to straddle the board while he stops it with his foot from taking flight. He points at the box and says something. Lou runs inside the house and returns with a black garbage bag, into which she places the cardboard box. That makes me smile because it’s what I would do, and because I know Mark not only wants to rescue Lou, he wants to do it well.

Lou lifts the plastic-wrapped box onto Mark’s shoulder, where he balances it with one arm. Then she stands beside the board with Jemima held so high on her chest that the baby’s top half flops onto her mother’s shoulderblades as though she’s about to go headfirst down a slide. Mark stands on the other side of the board, his free arm across it, and they walk forward into the wild floodwater, the hammering rain. When the muddy flow rises above Lou’s chest, she puts Jemima on the surfboard, nestling her in front of Joe. Mark has seen the rip, which would pull them towards the football fields, and steers the board the way one would a ship, adjusting and readjusting to stay on course.