For a suspended moment, before he began pedalling, she thought she could run back to the dance, to Jack. But her limbs were heavy and her head hurt and the water seemed as if it would swallow her. It didn’t look like the usual high tide. It was unnatural. Wrong, somehow.

When they arrived at Leafy Lane, it was a wide, running stream already and they had to dismount and haul themselves and the bike through the cold water. It was up to their ankles and then, as they dragged on, up to their calves. Peter shouted, ‘Come on, Ver!’ as she fell behind but her legs were so slow. He held her hand and pulled her sometimes, until they finally stopped and clambered up a small bank on the corner to the farm where they could see, thank God, lights on in the farmhouse.

Breathing heavily, they looked at the water, ruining the winter-sown crops. She could smell it too – the smarting salt of the sea. Saltwater – no place on the land, she heard her father’s voice – glistening in the moonlight, beautiful and destructive. Peter passed her a small silver flask in silence. She looked up at him but he wasn’t looking at her. It made her think that Peter must be drinking more than she’d realised; that he was becoming like Father. She drank the whisky and spluttered, then drank again; the sweet, cloying, powerful liquid slipped down her throat.

‘We’ll need it,’ Peter said, taking it back off her, and returning it to his pocket, already lowering his long legs back down into the dark water.

‘Oh God,’ she said, clutching her stomach. It heaved and buckled and she felt she had to hold onto it or she would explode.

‘Bloody hell, Ver,’ she heard him say, but she didn’t care because she was doubled over, vomiting the whisky into a black hedge.

Later, all she remembered of the last part of the journey was the pain in her legs, the bitterness in her mouth, her tongue swollen. Something hard brushed against her in the water. Fear rose inexorably like the water.

At the house, the lights were off on the ground floor. Stumbling, splashing through the wavelets sloshing round the door, the water almost up to the letterbox, Peter said, ‘You’re here now, get him up to the top floor and stay there.’

‘What about you?’ she wailed. ‘Aren’t you coming too?’

‘I’ve got to check on the animals.’ He gave her hand a quick squeeze and she clung onto it.

‘What about the house? All the furniture, Mother’s things? And we don’t know if Father is… How do you know he’s not out there?’