Matty walked to the end of the jetty, sat down, pulled out a cigarette. Didn’t light it. The water was perhaps hip height here, though probably deeper further out. Easy enough to disappear into, be swallowed up forever. There was a small, uninhabited island 400 metres away, clustered with pastel-coloured trees. Beyond it, the same mountains you could see from Brigid’s living room, black and stoic.

A STOLEN LIFE RING IS A STOLEN LIFE. The yellow buoy was here this time, set in a box on top of a rusting iron pole. Matty leant against it, put a hand down into the water.

His face. The engulfing shock of the cold as he pushed Matty’s head down into the water, and the muffled, warped sound of him shouting.

Fingers out again, as if bitten. Matty got up, walked quickly back down the jetty to the car park and sat on the top of the black picnic table, shaking.

This life had been stolen. Not just his. It had been replaced by a new one. A killer. Even if you’d done it to protect yourself, it was still called killing.

The fine-grained sound of bicycle spokes. ‘Aren’t you going in today?’ The little girl from the other day was there, a purple scarf tucked into her candy-pink coat, braking. She got off and edged her bike stand outwards with her foot.

‘No.’ An attempt to look normal. Not like a killer. So much for not being seen.

She twirled around. ‘But you’re a mermaid.’

Matty stared back towards the opaque water. ‘Not today I’m not.’

The girl was staring at the plasters. Too late to hide them. ‘Did you fall over?’

‘Yeah.’

She sniffed. ‘I do that all the time.’ She walked over to the shopper. ‘One of our teachers at school has got a bike like that. Ms Kilduff.’ She pronounced ‘Ms’ with lots of ‘zzz’s. Brigid Kilduff, the name on the envelopes and National Geographic magazine that had dropped through the door this morning. ‘Did you steal it?’

‘No.’

She crouched down, pulling a blade of grass up and putting it between her fingers. She blew, ineffectually. ‘I know quite a lot about mermaids. They don’t all have tails. Some have human legs.’ She threw a squinting frown towards Matty’s lower half. ‘Why do they call the boys mermen but girls mermaids and not mergirls or merwomen?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Maybe it meant that they were the mermen’s servants and had to do all their hoovering and chores and everything. I bet mermen are really lazy.’ She slid her eyes over, waiting for Matty to smile.

A numb feeling, toes and fingers. The feeling of being in water for too long. ‘Shouldn’t you be at school or something?’

‘I had to go to the dentist.’ She drew her lips back and curled her tongue. ‘I’ve got too many teeth.’

‘Right.’