It was a huge effort to cross the marshland and I knew I was going the wrong way, heading away from civilisation; away from the road and the electricity station and the billboard and the town, but fear forced me on. The pain in my back became a heavy ache and my head began to spin and nausea rose up inside me. The world tilted, this way, then that. Hot turned to cold. I shivered. I was freezing. The adrenaline surge was replaced by a dreadful weakness. I’d never been so tired. There was darkness at the periphery of my vision.

I could lay down, I thought, lay in the marsh. The ground was soft and pulpy. The insects that swarmed round me, drawn to the smell of blood, would feast, but the marsh would keep me warm and I could sleep for a while.

I could rest.

I relaxed my knees. I let my body fall, and as the marsh came up to meet me, I heard a voice.

Not yet, Edie. You can rest soon, but not yet. Come this way. Come with us!

My sight was blurred, as if I was drunk, but I could just make out the figures in front of me; the woman and the child I’d seen earlier on the beach. They were standing just out of reach. I narrowed my eyes to try to focus.

‘Daniel?’ I whispered.

‘This way,’ the child said.

‘Daniel!’

He turned and pointed and then the woman took hold of his hand and the pair began to walk away. The pain, the nausea, the panic receded. I forgot the fear. They were moving slowly, giving me time to follow. I felt an immense calm. I focused on the child, my darling boy, as he walked across the marsh as if it were a grass meadow on a summer’s day, and I didn’t notice the flies or the blood or the heat.

All I had in my heart was love.

They found me on the boardwalk that led across the marshland to a hide beside a pool where migrating birds came to feed. I was unconscious but in the shade of the hide, the only spot in that vast flatland where the sun couldn’t reach me. They took me to the hospital in Ragusa and I was bathed and rehydrated, the shot removed, my wounds treated alongside the sunburn and the insect bites.

Joe sat beside my bed reading a book about traditional methods for the restoration of old buildings while he waited for me to wake. And when I did wake, he told me that Irma Arnone had called the police and told them that I was out on the marshland somewhere, wounded. They hadn’t held out much hope of finding me alive, but they drove to the boardwalk, to start their search from there, and there I was. It was a miracle, they said.