Phyllis touched her on the shoulder again and said, “That’s kind of you, Mary. I’ll pass that around.” She sighed. “Maybe you’re right – it would be too complicated. Maybe it’s better that people help each other on a piecemeal basis.”

She smiled at her own pun, but her eyes flickered in concern at her friend. Mary looked haunted, I thought, with dark shadows beneath her eyes. She seemed to have aged about five years in the past twenty-four hours.

Without warning the lights went out and we were plunged into darkness. There was a shout from the front of the room, a voice I recognized as Derek’s.

“Where’s the fuse box? I’m an engineer.”

Liam’s mobile phone illuminated his face and washed it in a blue hue. “It’s at the bottom of the stairs.” He shuffled in the darkness. “I’ll show you.”

Other phones started to appear around the room too, some using flashlight apps, which were surprisingly effective. We’d be in serious trouble if the mobile phones stopped working too, I thought. No one had even suggested looking for candles. Liam and Derek brushed past us and for the next few minutes we could hear their voices downstairs. Eventually the lights came back on, provoking a hum of relieved chatter.

Derek reappeared in the doorway, sounding authoritative. “Just a tripped switch this time, but I think we should be getting candles and torches together in case there’s a proper power outage.” He even looked a little better than he had earlier, I thought. Finding something useful to do had helped him.

“Handy to have an engineer around the place,” someone remarked.

“For a tripped switch?” someone else said with a laugh.

Derek’s face flushed a dark red. It was the same voice as the snake-meat comment, I thought. Whoever it was, they were hushed quickly. Derek opened his mouth to speak again, then appeared to change his mind, and returned to his seat.

Shortly afterwards people began to file out of the room to head back to their houses, the B & B or their nests downstairs, a gloomy silence to their movements. Maeve, Phyllis, Liam and I looked at one another.

“What now?” Phyllis asked.

“Sit it out?” Liam said. “Everyone seems safe for the moment. The only thing we can do is wait till morning and hope it stops raining and the floods subside. Then we’ll have work to do.” He smiled. “Pub? Fetch candles and torches and meet in the pub?”

“We have been told to stay dry and warm and out of the way,” Phyllis said brightly.

“I can’t,” Maeve said. “I’ve had a few calls and I’m going to have to try my best to see who I can get to.”

“Need any help?” Liam asked.