‘Casey,’ Ed whispered. ‘Wait.’

Hessa followed Casey over the side, grabbing the painter and hauling the boat up the mud. A few feet above the shoreline, a large chunk of metal lay half-buried in the mud, and they tied up the little boat.

The ships lolled there, just visible in the dark, awkward as swans on land. The Beauvallet had lain in the mud much longer than the Tephi, Casey saw.

This old cruise ship must have been over a thousand feet long once, but massive gas-torches had sliced the Beauvallet’s steel hull like a cake a few hundred feet back from her bow. More than half the ship was gone, only splinters of steel left on the beach.

So far, the workers had left the front third of the cruise ship almost untouched. Here and there, parts of her hull had been stripped of steel, leaving gaping holes in her sides, but she was still recognisable as an elegant old ship.

As Casey looked up from the shoreline, the remains of the Beauvallet were a strange marine doll’s house. Sliced from top to bottom, side to side, her cabins were hacked open like some fantastical anatomy lesson. From the muddy beach, Casey could see her cabins, deck after deck of them, with only half a room remaining on each level. Half a floor, and half a wall, and half a balcony, jagging into nothing. Casey could even see curtains in the remains of some of the cabins, an advent calendar on Christmas Eve.

For a second, the old photographs of a blitzed London flashed across Casey’s mind. A scattering of Londoners in a black and white dawn, stunned by a house half-standing, and a whole life gone. She remembered sepia curtains blowing awkwardly in the breeze, a table and chairs perched above a cliff of rubble.

‘Poor old thing,’ Hessa said.

Casey looked up at the darkness of the beach, the broken shapes of metal, and felt a shudder of dread.

She raised her chin. ‘Let’s go.’

Only one light shone in the shipyard, sending a sad half-beam over the mud. A warm breeze drifted in from the sea. As Casey peered up at the barns, clouds blew across the moon, and it darkened abruptly. She pushed away a shiver, superstition tightening her throat.

Anything might be here.

One step.

Be brave.

Another step.

A whisper back to the others: ‘It’s fine.’

The silence wrapped around her. Chunks of steel had been laid in a rough row up towards the shipyard. A makeshift path, scrambling towards the barns.

I have to try.

A breeze was blowing up from the south. A bird screamed overhead, and Casey jumped, the shudder clawing down her spine. That fear, so familiar.

She could sense Ed and Hessa behind her as she crept along, a pulse pounding in her throat. Her blood fizzed, and she almost laughed aloud. Is this how I live? Why this? Why here?