But there were no deer on these islands. Everyone knew that.

She dashed across the floor and out into the long corridor, glancing down to Emil’s door at the far end; it was closed, no light shining through beneath the crack as it often did. She looked in to Linus’s room, willing herself to see what she always saw when she checked on him – Linus fast asleep and lying on his side, his body tucked up in a caterpillar curl, thumb in his mouth – a babyhood habit he had outgrown during the day but not, as yet, at night. But the scene that greeted her was unequivocal. His bed was empty, the alarm beeping on his clock again as it came off snooze . . .

‘Oh God,’ she gasped, knowing exactly what was happening. He was running away, taking the boat back to Summer Isle. But though there was no breeze, though the water would be flat, he didn’t know how to navigate the lagoon by night. He wouldn’t see the spar markers warning of the rocks that could tear the bottom of a boat . . .

She flew down the landing and stairs, neither knowing nor caring if she made any sound, stuffing her feet into a pair of wellingtons left by the back door. They were several sizes too big but she ran anyway, hearing them wallow and flap around her bare legs as she sprinted down the lawn in her t-shirt.

It felt eerie running through the trees in the dead of night. Although the sun and moon both hung in the sky like dimmed chandeliers, the fabric of the air felt different – thicker, dense, populated with tiny shining, watchful eyes and the myriad sounds of the nocturnal world. Still she ran, weaving a warp thread through the pines until the pewter sea glimmered in flashes, growing ever larger . . .

She heard something behind her, she was sure. Footsteps? Breathing, too?

No. She couldn’t stop. She wouldn’t. Her imagination was playing tricks, her childish fright rearing in scant breaths, and she could see now that Linus was on the jetty. His slight figure was a silhouette against the glimmering water as he carried an oar down the gangplanks towards the rowing boat, slack-tied to the ladder.

She went to call out, to stop him as she reached the beach, but the word caught in her throat like a sleeve on a nail. She watched in silence as he lifted the oar – which was not an oar at all.

‘Bell –’ The word was a whisper, a pant, the hand on her shoulder a pull-back, and she turned in fright to find Emil behind her. He too was in his bedclothes – pyjama trousers only, no shirt, nor even any shoes – a wild look in his eyes, like hers. ‘What are you doing? Where are you going?’

But the questions didn’t need an answer, because his gaze fell on the boy behind her, waving a white flag. And across the water, a white flag was waving back. A silent communication in the dead of night. The forlorn attempts of a son to reach his mother.