He had no way of telling what time it was beyond what the policeman had said. But that felt like hours ago. The wind had dropped and the water was no longer coming in waves. The moon fell on the shining surface illuminating the great glass sheet of submerged marshland and grazing fields, flooded between the town and the sea. He was at the stern, Jack rowing. Looking back at the lights pricking here and there in the town, he was sure that they must be near the farm. Ahead, the tops of trees sticking up in the water that must be the pine woods. Their woods. His and Verity’s. Drowned.

‘You cold?’ Jack’s voice sounded far away.

‘Yeah.’

‘Jesus, buddy, I can feel nothing down here. Goddamn, I’d kill for a smoke.’

A plaintive sound drifted back to him. It was Jack.

‘What the hell are you doing?’

‘Singing to keep myself warm. You should join in.’

But he couldn’t. He listened as Jack’s voice lifted out of the boat, singing about the moon breaking his heart and love blooming in the night, over the flood and out to the sea. It was a very strange thing to hear him. Then he couldn’t bear it any more.

‘Shut up!’

When Jack stopped singing, the quiet was disturbing. Sound had been dampened by the flood, like everything else. Just the shush shush of the water.

‘I saw you in Norwich,’ he blurted out. ‘I saw you in a café with a man. You left a metal case on the table. At first I thought it was a cigarette case, but then I realised it couldn’t have been.’

Jack was an outline at the other end of the boat. A dark shadow silhouetted by the full moon. He didn’t say anything.

‘What was it, Jack? What were you doing? Do your superiors in the Air Force know?’

From Jack’s end of the boat came a burst of derisive laughter. ‘You’re imagining things, Art. What do you think this is, a kid’s game, playing at spies?’ He began to sing again.

‘I did see you,’ Arthur shouted in a blare of rage.

‘All right. What did you see? Did you follow me?’ He didn’t sound angry, just tired. ‘That’s funny. Okay – so you saw me in a café. That’s it. Nothing else. You’ve got this wrong, my friend. It ain’t what you think. I ain’t what you think I am.’

‘What are you then? Because as far as I can see, you’re not honourable, or honest, and none of us know a thing about you.’

But he was interrupted by a piercing cry. A fox? A trapped animal?

‘What was that?’ said Jack.

‘God, I hope Verity’s all right.’ It came out without thought.

‘Yeah, so do I.’