Bell looked back at him with angry tears in her eyes, seeing how he shrank before her. ‘Now do you see what you’ve done?’

Emil watched in splintered pain as his child waved the giant flag. It was tattered with age, holes worn through where the sun had broken down the fibres, the former tent-pole heavy on his still-little arms. After several minutes, the movements slowed, becoming jerky, and his every instinct was to go over there and help him, be his father and take the weight for him. But Bell was right. It was because of him that his son even needed to do this. He could see from the strong rhythmic waves coming from Summer Isle just how much Hanna was missing him, trying to convey her love and longing through a consistent, unfailing stroke. None of them – not Hanna, Linus nor Bell – wanted him here, and to intrude, even to help, would bring their moment of connection to an abrupt stop.

He heard a sound coming from the jetty. Linus was groaning as the weight in his arms became too much. He couldn’t wave the flag now, only hold it, and after another few moments he was forced to lay it down.

‘Mamma!’ Linus called, waving his arms frantically and jumping so that the boards rattled. ‘I’m still here, Mamma!’

But across the water, the waving stopped, the flag becoming almost instantly invisible in stillness. It was impossible to see Hanna from here, not from this distance in the crepuscular light, a tendril of sea mist winding its way into the lagoon.

‘Mamma!’

His heart twitched at the anguish in his child’s voice. For the thousandth time, he questioned what he was doing – dragging Linus here and holding him, to all intents and purposes, against his will.

He saw Bell flinch too, her shoulders hitched high, as Linus jumped higher, his calls becoming more frantic, desperate, pleading – but Hanna had gone, and Linus began to weep at the prospect of facing another night and day here without her. Would he be back on the jetty tomorrow night? Had he been doing this every night since they’d arrived?

Emil felt the rejection like a blow to his chest. He loved that child with every fibre of his being, but his attempts to bond, to connect . . . What he was doing wasn’t enough. He wasn’t enough, and he never would be. He’d missed out on everything – his son’s first day at school, learning to ride his bike, skiing together for the first time, Christmases, birthdays . . . and now nothing could make up for the time lost. His son was a stranger to him, and he called another man ‘Pappa’. Those were the facts. That was the hand Fate had dealt him. He was ‘lucky’ to be alive, everyone kept telling him, as though that should be enough. But what was the point of it all, if he’d lost the only thing worth living for?