Then, when she could stay down no longer, she saw something blue. Blue. The soles of blue jellybean sandals. She reached down, why did it take so long to move, every second stretched out into a line she had to crawl along. At last she felt a leg beneath her hand. Grasped it. Pulled and pulled. Dear God, help. Don’t let this happen. A vertical body in the weeds of the lake, like a diver frozen in flight.

Up rose a tiny child, a pale face, open eyes and floating hair. She wrapped her arm around her waist, held on tight. Body screaming to breathe; mustn’t breathe, mustn’t pull water into gasping lungs. She felt a shudder rack her entire body with the effort of not breathing. Driving through her mind was the memory of giving birth – another child, another drowning body sucked into life. Thrashing upwards now in a tangle of limbs but where’s the air, where’s the surface of the world? Lungs exploding now. Soon got to take a giant, hopeless, drowning breath; water will stream in, fill up all the cavities. Black and red and purple lights shattering in her head, like coloured glass dashed against the walls of her skull, flying off in sharp, cutting fragments. And then air at last, thick and violent air ripping into her lungs, tearing them apart before she sank again. Up once more, pedalling desperately with her legs and trying to push the heavy little body out into the world, holding it aloft while she herself was submerged by the water.

Then her arms were empty. The body was gone from her. All she held was absence.

She fell back into the water. Felt a hand under her back, someone pulling her. She breathed in and felt air running through the burning passages of her body, into the collapsed space where her lungs had once been. Through her throbbing, burning eyes she saw a face. Calm face, eyes to drown in. She smiled.

‘You’re beautiful,’ she said.

‘Let’s get you aboard.’

Then Mickey leant down from the boat and held out a hand.

‘Is Katherine all right?’ she said.

‘Get aboard.’

She grasped Mickey’s hand. Luke pushed her from behind, and she was landed like a thrashing fish on the hot deck.

‘Katherine?’ she said again.

Katherine lay a few feet from her, on Lorrie’s lap. Her eyes were open. She was chalky-pale, blue around the lips, but she was breathing and whimpering slightly. Lorrie held her, pressed her to her breast. Neil crouched beside her with his hand on her matted hair.

‘She should be kept warm,’ said Luke. He bounded downstairs and reappeared with two thick blankets that he wrapped around the pair. Lorrie hardly looked at him; her eyes were wide and glassy.

‘Are you OK?’ Mickey asked Irene.