She fell into the rhythm and lost herself in her thoughts. The fog was clearing now that she was away from the shoreline and she could see the twinkling lamplights of Kelseth slowly ebbing into the distance. Lily barely noticed the wind whipping her bare face, the same wind that was whipping up waves that were growing and growing in size and ferocity.

Her concentration wavered when a huge crack of lightning illuminated the dark sky. She had shut out her fearful thoughts, her terror at being alone on the open water with only a rowboat separating her from being swallowed by the waves.

The next strike of lightning broke open the casket in which she stored her fears and she was suddenly nose to nose with her darkest nightmares.

In the flash of lightning, she saw that she was surrounded by huge, white-tipped waves and she felt nausea rise from her stomach and clutch at her throat. She fumbled and the rhythm she had worked hard to maintain slipped away as she lost her grip on her left oar. In slow-motion, she watched as it slid out of its metal rigging and disappeared into the sea, floating away, away, away, her hopes of reaching dry land floating away alongside it.

She let out a cry of frustration, of panic, of helplessness. At that moment, a wave crashed into the side of the little rowboat and knocked it sideways, capsizing it. Lily’s mouth was still open from her wails of fear and she barely had a chance to gasp in a lungful of air before she plunged headfirst into the black water, her mouth and nose filling with the stinging salt.

She was weighed down by her heavy woollen dress and cloak, and her bag that was still hooked over her body. She was pulled this way and that by the violent current and she soon lost all orientation. Lily had no sense of which way the sky was, and which was the bottom of the sea. She couldn’t swim, she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t see. All she could do was feel, and it was excruciating. Her lungs seemed to be full of rocks, her eyes burned, her chest felt as though it was being crushed in a vice, and her head was pounding.

Then the pain faded.

Lily felt her consciousness floating away with the waves and she no longer felt the urge to struggle or panic or fight for her life. For the second time that day, she was seconds away from death, and this time, this time he was laughing. He knew she couldn’t evade him again. Lily felt death take her arm in a strong grip and pull her down, down, down, into the thick coal-black darkness. It was peaceful, and she let herself be taken away.

And then she broke the surface of the waves.

In the darkness she could just make out a figure holding onto her in the water, but as she tried to gasp for air, another wave crashed into her face, filling her lungs with even more water.