Quickly, before she lost her nerve, she took off the uncomfortable purple dress she was still wearing, changed into some jodhpurs and a thick sweater and ventured out onto the landing. At her father’s door, she listened. Snoring. She wanted to ask him to help her, to do something, to be a child again and have him solve everything, but he couldn’t help her. Not any more, and not in that state. She would just have to do it by herself. Get the horses to safe ground. Find Peter. Not drown. She laughed aloud at this last one as if defying herself not to give in. She would not end up like her mother, drowned in grief for all that she’d lost.

Near the bottom of the stairs, she stopped. The water was high above the skirting board. She noticed the strong smell of manure as if the fields had come into the house. They had. The whole of the downstairs had been infiltrated by a layer of the outside. To her right, the dining room, the old furniture, salt-ruined. All their history – her mother’s history – desecrated.

But there was nothing she could do now. The horses needed her. She rolled up her jodhpurs and dipped her feet into the water. The cold made her gasp but she gritted her teeth and stepped in it up to her knees. She waded to the back door of the scullery where she found her old wellingtons floating. They would have to do. Standing on a chair, she pulled them on. Back at the front door, she took a mac off the peg. It was her mother’s, the one she’d worn to the dance. She pulled it tight around her and it made her feel a little better somehow, as if her mother was with her. In the pocket she found the little cigarette case she had filched from her mother’s drawer, and Jack’s Zippo. To them she added her brother’s hip flask and a small torch she’d found in the useful drawer in the scullery. These little preparations made her feel as if she had a plan, as if she was off on an adventure. She almost laughed at the absurdity.

Outside, the wind rushed around her and a bright, white full moon appeared from behind dark clouds. It shone on the glistening water, which was streaming away from her as if it was trying to escape back to the sea. Wading away from the farmhouse, towards the lower fields, she stopped and looked back. The old, imposing building was surrounded by a lake of water. It had become its own island, with her father in it, marooned. Like his whole generation, he was cut off now. Battle-scarred and exhausted, the tide of change threatened to engulf them.