Seriously. I thought I got in people’s way and that all the horrible things people had told me as I was growing up were actually true. That I’d be doing the world a massive favour if I just stepped off the planet. Auf Wiedersehen. Thanks for having me.

But when I woke up in the hospital to find that I was (a) alive and (b) holding Gaia’s hand, I thought that perhaps I’d been wrong. Maybe living was a good idea. Maybe I would give it a go.

I survived the fall after the crash; Derry didn’t. I probably would have died on the little bank at the bottom of the cliff, given that it was freezing cold and I had a chewed ankle and a pretty nasty head injury, but Gaia had been able to climb back up the bank to her dad and to raise the alarm. When they found me I was almost unconscious from hypothermia and a minute or so from being brain dead. So I came back a second time. I guess I wasn’t meant to go just yet.

Sometime later, Clive waded into the fjord to look for Derry, but her body had already been tugged away by the current. He swore blind that Derry had nothing to do with Aurelia’s death. He said it was an accident and yes, Derry had witnessed Aurelia drown but she’d frozen in fear instead of helping her. I don’t think Tom believed him.

Nobody could work out why Derry did this. She was friends with Aurelia. It didn’t make sense. Clive said she had acted strangely ever since they moved to Norway. She had been sleepwalking, he said, suffering from bad dreams. I told them what Derry had told me – that Aurelia’s diary wasn’t written by Aurelia at all. Derry had ripped out the pages and rewrote what was essentially a bunch of lies. Maren suggested that Derry had been influenced by the nøkk. A nøkk could bewitch people, she said, stir up their baser natures. Some people were more susceptible to its influence than others, but if it had bewitched Derry it could be why she had written the diary. I’m not sure whether Tom fully believes this either. But he hadn’t called me crazy, when the whole story came spilling out of Gaia and me in hospital. I think he’s seen some strange things in this place, too.