‘Moses?’ she tried again. ‘Moses? I think maybe she’d be more comfortable if you laid her on the floor.’

He sniffed and took a gulp, his eyes skating over Thea, as if he could hear her voice but didn’t know where it was coming from. Thea gently held Delores’s shoulder, never taking her gaze from Moses, expecting him to lash out at any minute, and together they eased her onto the floor.

Kneeling next to her, Moses sniffed and wiped his forearm across his nose, a peculiarly child-like thing to do. Delores kept trying to say something, opening and closing her mouth, her lips moving though she couldn’t force out any sound. Thea had been taught CPR once on a training course years ago; she’d spent a morning bandaging up her colleagues and blowing ferociously into legless plastic torsos, grimy with over-use. She couldn’t remember any of it now.

‘Moses? We need to get her to a hospital. Get her on the boat? I need to open the door.’

Again, he seemed to hear her but didn’t look at her. Thea glanced over to the device Moses had so casually tossed away into the corner earlier. What she really wanted was that. It could give her a way out.

Thea felt something nudge her wrist and she looked down to see Delores’s hand shakily trying to grasp on to hers. Her hand was cold and bloodied hair covered one eye but the other was fixed on Thea as she convulsed a few more times. It was instinct to allow those trembling fingers to clutch hers, but she couldn’t help thinking of Ethan. He hadn’t been given the same comfort. He’d died so suddenly, nobody had stroked his hair, or cried over him – or held his hand. His body was still at the lighthouse, dust settling on his open eyes.

She thought about gently sliding her hand out from under Delores’s chill grasp but, in the end, she couldn’t do it. Her hand was so cold, Thea couldn’t take away the warmth of hers, just when the woman needed it most.

She watched as Delores took a breath and then stilled, a stillness Thea was becoming all too familiar with, the body relaxing into death. Whatever had been Delores dimmed and disappeared from her gaze. Moses howled, still on his knees, bending to bury his face in the dead woman’s stomach.