‘You’ve grown, Linus.’ His voice was hoarse.

‘Yes, sir.’ Linus sounded almost apologetic for the fact. Was it a betrayal to have grown – grown up – whilst this man, his father, had been sleeping? ‘. . . So have you.’

A half-smile cocked Emil’s mouth. ‘I’ve been trying.’ He gave a shrug. ‘I heard you were a fast runner, so I thought I should train.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Your mamma. Is it true?’

Linus gave an embarrassed shrug and kicked at the sand.

‘Absolutely it is,’ Bell interjected, putting a hand on Linus’s shoulder and squeezing it. She could tell he was overwhelmed, now that the initial adrenaline burst was diffusing. ‘He’s the fastest boy in his year.’

Emil’s eyes narrowed with pride, never lifting off his boy as she spoke. As though she wasn’t really there. ‘You must get it from me, then. I was always the fastest boy in my year too.’

Linus glanced up at him, but instinctively stepped back. His interest was piqued, but Bell knew it was still far too soon, too hard for him to fathom that he ‘got anything’ from him, was biological kin to this stranger; that it was this man here that was his father and not Max, the only one he had ever known. The child had had only a day to absorb that fact, thanks to Emil’s bullying tactic to be reunited as soon as possible, whatever the fallout. They all needed to remember that. She did. Behind those good looks and that diffident, reserved charisma was a man who Hanna had warned her always got what he wanted.

‘Do you remember me?’

Linus nodded, looking even more uncertain. ‘In the hospital.’

‘Oh.’ Emil frowned. ‘I’m afraid . . . I don’t remember much after I woke up. No, I meant . . . do you remember me from before?’

Linus shook his head. ‘No, sir.’ He looked anxious again, as though his negative answer was the wrong one.

There was a pause and Emil seemed to shrink a little, as though he’d been pushed.

‘Well, you were very little,’ he said after a moment, staring at his own feet half buried in the sand. He looked up suddenly with a lit expression. ‘You were obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine. Remember that?’

‘A little bit.’ From his tone of voice, Bell knew that meant ‘no’. He just didn’t want to say it again.

‘Gordon was your favourite engine. He was the fastest one on the island. Maybe that’s why you liked him so much. You were both speed machines.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Bell saw the excitement leave Emil’s body, the conversation dwindling in the face of his son’s evident wariness of him. Emil glanced at her, as if for help, and she forced a smile; but he surely couldn’t be surprised that things were playing out this way? What had he expected? That Linus would run into his arms and they’d start making sandcastles? He had rushed things, forced this meeting by beating down his child’s mother to impose his will, no less.