As the car wound down the hill towards the seafront cottage Tony had bought a year ago, he wondered if Carol knew about the appeal. He’d e-mail her tonight to make sure. Thank God for electronic communication. It avoided so many of the occasions for awkwardness that seemed to occur when they were face to face, or even talking on the phone. He was conscious of having failed Carol, and, in the process, himself. She was never far from his thoughts, but to tell her that would have been a kind of betrayal he couldn’t bring himself to perform.

Tony pulled up in the narrow street outside his cottage, parking the car half on the kerb. There was a light on in the living room. Once, such a sight would have set the cold hand of fear clutching his heart. But his world had changed in more ways than he could ever have dreamed of. Now, he wanted everything to stay the same; clear, manageable, boxed off.

It wasn’t perfect, not by a long way. But it was better than bearable. And for Tony, better than bearable was as good as it had ever been.

The throb of the engines soothed him, as it always had. Bad things had never happened to him on the water. For as long as he could remember, boats had protected him. There were rules of life on board, rules that had always been clear and simple, rules that existed for good and logical reasons. But even when he’d been too young to understand, when he’d inadvertently done things he shouldn’t have, the punishment had never descended on him until they went ashore. He’d known it was coming, but he had always managed to hold the fear at bay while the engines rumbled and the mingled smells of men’s unwashed bodies, stale cooking fat and diesel fumes filled his nostrils.

The pain had only ever been visited on him when they left their life on the water behind and returned to the stinking apartment by the fish docks in Hamburg where his grandfather demonstrated the power he held over the young boy in his care. While he was still staggering to recover his land legs, the punishments would begin.

Even now when he thought about it, the air in his lungs seemed to condense. His skin felt as if it were writhing over his flesh. For years, he’d tried not to think about it because it made him feel so fractured, so fragile. But slowly he had come to understand that this was no escape. It was merely a postponement. So now he made himself remember, almost treasuring the terrible physical sensations because they proved he was strong enough to defeat his past.