Drowning. This is what it felt like. Lungs filled with something other than air, an all-consuming crush of it. To swallow would be to make it worse. Light somewhere up there, very far away and dwindling. Matty’s foot slid off the doorstep, an awkward jolt into the cold of the porch. There were coats, a child’s mud-caked wellies.

‘I – I don’t know what’s happening,’ he said. ‘But please don’t go.’ His voice, no longer just in the inner ear. Not just memories and imaginings. New words. Real words. ‘Don’t go, Matty.’

The hallway had slotted wooden tiling on the floor. Sheanna was shaking in a heap on the rug, her hair stuck to her cheek, Matty’s coat still round her.

‘Please,’ Joe said, looking up. ‘Tell me what’s happened.’ It sounded so formal. Almost as if it wasn’t his native tongue. An arm around Sheanna, wiping at her mouth. ‘What happened?’

‘I was sick,’ she said, and began to cry.

‘She needs warmth,’ Matty said. ‘Hot drinks, hot food. Blankets. One thing at a time, slowly. Maybe a doctor. She fell in the lough.’

‘Fell?’

‘I wanted to swim under the water,’ Sheanna said, with a shudder, her nose running. ‘I’m cold. Cold, cold, cold.’ She kept saying it, only the little percussive snap audible. Her feet and hands were a supernatural blue.

‘OK,’ he said, not seeming to understand.

‘I had to—’ A hand up to lips. Trembling. ‘CPR.’

‘Jesus Christ.’ He looked aghast.

‘I think she’s OK.’ Words felt thick, remote. ‘She’s talking. That’s good.’

He looked up. ‘Can you help me?’

Matty lifted Sheanna, holding her at the armpits and seeming to take most of the weight even though Joe had his arms under her waist. They carried her into another room, placing Sheanna on a sofa. He disappeared, stairs creaking, although he wasn’t moving terribly fast.

Matty stood staring at Sheanna and dripping onto the carpet. Jeans glued to skin. Deep shivers beginning to come, and not from the cold.

The sound of the stairs again. Blankets and towels brought down. Kettle switched on.

He knelt down to Sheanna, beginning to undress her. ‘I’m calling Dad, OK?’

Sheanna nodded. Her swimming costume was peeled off, patched arms held up. A glimpse of the same pale brown and white-mottled skin on her chest, her knees. Her teeth were still chattering, a pulsing in her limbs, as she was dried and put into underwear and flannel pyjamas with dolphins on them. Socks. Slippers. Wrapped in a blanket like a little Russian doll.

Matty’s head was spinning. Dad. Daddy.

‘Will you sit?’ he said, rubbing Sheanna over the top of the blanket and glancing up, carefully. He looked so old.

‘Don’t rub.’

He stopped. ‘OK.’

Matty sat on the edge of an armchair, clutching a towel.

‘I don’t – I’m trying to understand.’ His eyebrows came together. ‘Were you with Sheanna?’