A muscle rippled in her jaw. When she turned to look at me her eyes had a strange look about them. Even her skin appeared different. Sallow, and kind of grey.

‘Derry,’ I said. ‘How did you know I gave Tom a diary?’

All the hardness seemed to melt out of her face, as though I’d flicked a switch.

‘It was a dream diary,’ she said blankly. ‘Aurelia wrote down all her dreams. And then the pages got ripped out and the diary was rewritten.’

The air had grown cold, and I suddenly felt very scared.

‘Did you have something to do with that?’

‘Yes,’ she said, as though she’d forgotten. ‘Yes. I think I did.’

I’m not sure what happened next. I saw a figure standing in the road, facing the car with their arms by the sides, as though waiting to be struck. Derry slammed the brakes and swerved wildly to avoid hitting them, but she overcompensated and the car plunged through the roadside barrier on to the verge.

There was a moment when the car sailed into the air, lifting my feet off the floor. I must have been screaming, but I heard nothing, saw nothing, except the trees and the silent cliffs. Then the car smashed hard against rock, bonnet first, and an airbag exploded in my face. We rolled, once, twice, a dozen times, and I thought, this is it, this is how I die. How will Tom tell Gaia? How will she cope, losing her mother and me in the space of a year?

The thought made me angry. Even when we crashed into the fjord, this flash of rage prevented me from blacking out fully.

The next thing I knew I was in the fjord, looking up at the sky. I must have climbed or fallen out of the car window, because I was floating on my back, moving downstream. My body sang with pain. Derry’s car was crumpled at the side of the bank, its front end dipping into the water. I couldn’t tell if Derry was inside or not, but I hadn’t the strength to try to save her. With a terrified whine the car see-sawed forward and plunged into the dark water.

The current beneath me moved fast, jostling me forward. I was powerless to do anything but let it carry me wherever it wanted. The water was freezing, and I was sure I had only a few minutes before I drowned, or died from hypothermia. Warm liquid crept down my face and into my eyes, and I suspected it was blood from a head wound.