Her mother wasn’t listening. She had her hand on the tiller, but she was leaning over the engine talking to Rosie. They were laughing, slapping their knees and squeezing their eyes shut in merriment. Because of the salt and moisture in the air, Rosie’s hair was twice its normal size.

Her mother should be concentrating. She was going too fast.

Golf balls rolled around the bottom of the boat, which was becoming an owlet play-pit. They waddled through them, nudging them with their beaks, rolling over them by mistake and toppling, a heap of scraggly fuzz and feathers. When they toppled they looked at Thea like it was her fault, blinking at her, stunned and serious.

‘Would you like a mushroom?’ Ethan asked, holding out a punnet of them, raw, white little cushions. He had an owlet on his wrist. It cocked its head at her and pecked thoughtfully at his watch. ‘Mushrooms are full of sleep. They help you to date.’ He shook the box at her.

She was too busy to have a mushroom. She wanted to move her feet but she couldn’t even see them properly beneath the owlets. Lifting a knee, she heaved. And again. Nothing. The golf balls rolled, the owlets fidgeted and shuffled and twittered, and she felt fear ball itself in her throat.

They were going too fast. Her mother wasn’t paying attention. There were too many golf balls and she was stuck.

The boat juddered over a set of waves, sending owls and golf balls sliding to the side. An owlet used the opportunity of finding itself on top of one of its siblings and hopped its way up Thea’s trouser leg to her knee.

It put its head on one side and stared at her with little round wet eyes. She could feel its sharp claws digging into her jeans. Then it started to retch, a horrible choking sound that shook its entire body, its throat working manically, its stubby wings flapping to no avail. Was the owl going to die? None of the owls could die! She’d tried so hard!

The owlet shook its head and made one final retching sound, spitting something up onto her knee. There were little bones and a kind of bracken-like material all balled up together around a tiny metal memory stick.

Oh, so that’s where it was, Thea thought to herself as a massive wave crashed over the front of the boat and she was slammed down face first into owlet fluff and …

Chapter 48

… her elbow.

She reared up with a gasp.

She’d been asleep. She’d actually fallen asleep in the middle of the horror show.

Not a hallucination, not a hallucination, not a hallucination.