The next day the sky was like scoured metal and the boat travelled through miles of salty wetlands, a waterway over water, so that there was no horizon, just a gradual dissolving of liquid marshes into the sea, into the sky. There was nothing to fix the eye, no vertical marker save for the occasional group of bushy trees and thick, bleached rushes. The world seemed flat, shapeless, never quite still but shimmering and dissolving in the scratchy silver light. They saw flamingoes standing on one pink leg in the distance, pointed out groups of swans and egrets, or buzzards circling high above them in the currents of air. They drank cups of bitter coffee and batted aside dense clouds of mosquitoes; Mickey spent much of his morning pursuing them round the boat, flattening them against the walls, leaving small dark smears of blood.

‘Imagine it in winter,’ said Lorrie.

‘I can’t decide whether it’s wonderful or grim,’ said Irene.

‘Both.’

Irene steered while the men played poker below deck. Katherine sat under the table, yelping in outrage every time their feet nudged her. When Neil took over, Irene went to the front of the boat with Luke’s binoculars, swinging her legs over the side. She wasn’t really looking at anything in particular, simply staring out at the dazzling emptiness all round her.

Ahead of her, a shape rose out of the water – at first, it was just a faint cloud on the horizon, but gradually it resolved and clarified, became an island of grey stone houses with a church at the top.

‘Look!’ she called.

‘We’re coming to the lakes,’ said Neil. ‘Hey!’ he shouted down to the others. ‘We’re nearly at the lakes.’

Half an hour later, the boat slid out of the mysterious, blurred emptiness of the wetlands and into the mouth of the salt lake, by the side of the thriving village. There was a small harbour where other boats were moored, a row of restaurants and bars with brightly coloured awnings and blackboards on the pavement advertising their menus, a pebble beach where children played. Fishing boats bobbed on the corrugated blue water; oyster beds spiked the distance like a bamboo plantation. As the boat headed towards the quay, the sun broke through; pale eggshell-blue cracks appeared in the sky.

‘God, what a relief,’ said Neil. ‘Normality. I was beginning to think it would go on for ever. Let’s stop here for a while and have lunch in one of those restaurants. They look as if they’re still open.’

‘Oysters,’ said Mickey. ‘A dozen oysters and a carafe of white wine.’

‘Shouldn’t there be an “r” in the month for oysters?’ asked Lorrie.

‘You sound like my bloody mother.’

‘But she’s right,’ said Neil. ‘As the fish expert here, I’d warn you that –’