And if she could see them, they could see her. She had to get their attention, somehow.

She picked up the lamp and held it up to the window. What was the Morse Code for SOS? Three dashes, three dots, three dashes? Or was it dots, dashes, dots?

Shit. She couldn’t remember. She needed Google. But had no phone or computer.

Although she did have Google, or at least an earlier version of it. She ran her finger over the spines of the encyclopedias until she came to the volume L to N, then pulled it off the shelf.

There it was. Morse Code. She looked over the schematic showing the alphabet.

Three dots, three dashes, three dots.

S-O-S.

She held the lamp up to the window and flicked it on and off, three times, quickly.

Then three dashes, then three dots.

She counted ten seconds then repeated it.

And then again, and again, and again.

She watched, looking for a sign that the person on the lake had seen her.

And then the torch went out, then on, then out.

They knew she was there.

Finn

At first he didn’t realize what it was. He saw the flashing light and thought that whatever kid was switching the lights on and off was going to get in trouble, but then he saw that it was in a pattern.

Three short flashes, three long, three short.

It rang a bell. That meant something, didn’t it? It was a kind of universal signal asking for help. He typed it into Google.

Holy shit.

It meant SOS. Save our souls.

Someone was asking for help. Or maybe they were just messing around. That was more likely. It was a teenager who’d seen his headlamp and was trying to fool him.

Still, it might not be. He looked at the window.

It happened again, then there was a gap – maybe ten seconds – and there it was.

SOS.

It stopped. Maybe he should reply, but he had no idea what to say.

He looked on his phone. ‘H’ was four dots, ‘I’ was two.

He clicked his headlamp on and off quickly, four times, then paused and did it twice more.

Hi.

It was a bit lame, but what else was he supposed to say?

He waited for a few seconds, and the reply came.

Annabelle

‘A’ was dot, dash.

‘N’ was dash, dot.

She started to spell out her name. Presumably the police were looking for her, so if someone showed up saying they’d seen an SOS signal followed by the name ‘Annabelle Westbrook’ the police would know immediately what was going on.

There may also have been a public information announcement so whoever was in the boat might recognize the name themselves.

Either way, this was her chance. And they didn’t even need to know Morse Code. They just needed access to a phone so they could google it.

Dash, dot: ‘N’.

Dot, dash: ‘A’.