‘My wife,’ he said. He was holding something in his arms. Arthur steadied the boat while Jack reached up and, legs braced, rocking, took the bundle from the old man. It was a thin, wretched woman, swaddled in a blanket, trembling, white with shock to match her hair, but alive. They manoeuvred the man down too and set back towards the town. As they were turning, a searchlight swept over the quayside and they rowed hard for it. The old couple were hunched in their blanket in between them. Jack kept up a steady stream of comforting talk. ‘We’ll get you a nice cup of tea soon enough,’ he said. How could he possibly sound so smooth and charming when all Arthur could think about was how teeth-achingly cold it was? How they could easily drown out here in the dark.

They came up alongside the source of the searchlight, a rescue boat from the coastguard. A grizzled man took the old couple. ‘Best get you fellas back to town now. You’ll be better off at the rescue centre.’

But Jack shouted back, ‘There are more old folk in the bungalows, sir. Children too,’ as if it had been his idea. They exchanged a quick glance of shared purpose.

‘We’ll see about them, you’ve done enough,’ said the man. Then he turned his boat around, sending spray over them and their little boat, and chugged off for the town.

‘We can’t stop now,’ Jack said. He was in darkness, with the torch held low, but Arthur could hear the urgency in his voice.

‘No,’ he said. They were far past the point of stopping. He didn’t think either of them wanted to – they were swept up by the tide themselves.

They tried to return to the prefabs but it was impossible to row. Each time Arthur tried to move the oars, the force of the wind and waves drove the little boat back towards the town. He knew there must have been multiple breaches of the embankment.

‘We’ve got to walk,’ he shouted to Jack.

This time, they each took a side of the boat and started to wade westwards. The water was up to their shoulders now, the bike light had disappeared, but Jack still held onto his torch. Now there was debris everywhere: when the moon broke through they could see pieces of wood, a fence post and the edge of a balcony floating past them. Once, the torch struck the snout and trotters of a dead pig sticking up. They heard the rescue boat come chugging behind them but it must have been parallel to them, for its light never came but swung past and beyond them. They were still wading, trudging doggedly on, when he saw the other boat strike something and get stuck. One of their men lassoed a rope to the balcony.