‘What happened at the dance?’ he shouted after her, but perhaps the wind took the shout because she only turned, very quickly, put her fingers to her lips and was gone. He hesitated for perhaps thirty seconds of horrible indecision then turned and ran away from the coming water, cold around his ankles, choosing the back way to avoid the sea, back towards home.

5.

19.27 train from Hunstanton hit by a bungalow at 19.32 Wells beach and woods cut off from the town by the flood

The front door wouldn’t open, but one of the windows in the bay could be prised ajar, the wood old and brittle. It came away in Verity’s hand and she tripped into cold water in the shadowy drawing room. It was up to her ankles here, not so bad. Thank God for the slight rise the house had been built on, the way it looked out from the top windows over the sea, thank God for that. But the rugs! The Queen Anne chairs! They’d been in her mother’s family for years.

‘Father!’ she called. The only answer, the wind whining and rain pounding on the windows.

Again she called, wading through to the hallway. No answer. He must have left the house, but she went forward to his study anyway. She imagined Peter out there in the dark, the cold, the relentless rain, the rising water.

No light. She felt along the walls.

‘Father,’ she called out again, but quieter now, not expecting a response. In her throat a jagged pain.

But a sound came from ahead, a muffled sound, she couldn’t think of what, but hurried on and came to the study door at the end of the hallway.

The door seemed stuck. She pushed hard and water came rushing down around her legs when she got the door open. It was higher in here, nearly shin-height. Moonlight streamed through the bay windows illuminating a ghostly scene. A flooded room, sparkling. Shadowy bookshelves enclosed the walls, books from the lower shelves bobbed in the floodwater, and a figure was slumped onto the enormous desk, twitching, grumbling, but not awake. She had a pang of sorrow for the saltwater-swollen, lost books.