Then later, when we made it home, the relentless rain had lashed the windows and the walls trembled as if a giant was shaking the house like a rattle.

Decades have passed but I can still see his face as clearly as if he was with me now. The concern in his eyes as he crouches to blot my tears.

Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go.

Lying here on this anniversary I imagine a parallel universe. A universe where he didn’t leave, but instead took me in his arms and walked me into the kitchen, drew the curtains to shut out the weather and lit the stove and made mugs of Ovaltine in which we dipped digestives. Safe and alive.

But then I hear his voice as it really happened.

Listen, Tam, he says. There are people out there, lost at sea, and if I don’t go they’ll die. Do you understand?

I didn’t understand but I didn’t say anything. I stayed quiet. Watched him button his heavy yellow oilskin and pull on thick rubber boots. He kissed my mother. Whispered something in her ear. Her fingers briefly touched the side of his face. Then he left.

I ran after him, of course. Yanked the front door open wide. I was hit by a rush of wind and driving rain that burnt my skin. Everything around me – the curtain, the coats on the hooks, the letters on the small table – was blown into an angry maelstrom.

When I screamed his name my voice was lost, whipped from my mouth and stolen by the storm. My mother pulled me back inside and closed the door. Everything stilled. It was as if death had danced through our house and followed my father out.

My mother’s scream woke me from my dream about the raven with the kittiwake chick gripped in its talons. Except it wasn’t the chick in the raven’s grasp. It was me. My body that was twisted and bent. My eye pecked clean. My insides trailing from its glistening beak.

I recall the way my heart hammered at the sound of her scream and the remnants of my nightmare. The light beside my bed glowed softly. Tiny china figurines frozen forever in their tree-trunk house.

No.

I am there again. Ten years old. Climbing from my bed. Tying my dressing gown. I am crouching at the top of the stairs. Looking down on my mother who is by the door. A man stands in front of her. He wears the same yellow coat as my father. The door is open behind him and I am struck by how still the air is, quiet and peaceful, content after eating my father, dozing like a sated monster. I can’t hear what the man is saying. He has huge hands. One rests on my mother’s shoulder. The back of it is covered with fine black hairs. I think how heavy it must feel on her and that perhaps it is the weight of his hand which makes her collapse on the floor.