Arthur had a strange vision of Verity in many places all at once: with him in the woods, at the dance, in her house above the floods, safe, holding onto her horse in the flood. ‘Yeah, so do I.’ So do I. Jack’s voice played in his head. He sounded hesitant. Or was he imagining it? In the dark it was hard to tell. If he asked, then it would be over.

In the dark, surrounded by seawater, the emptiness was overwhelming.

‘Did you see her? At the dance.’ He exhaled.

There was a pause.

‘I did see her, yeah. She was there.’

‘Who was she with?’ As he said it, he heard the suspicion and knew there was never going to be a good ending to this. He could stop it right now.

‘She was… say, do you think we’re near their place yet?’

‘Yes. We must be. Who was she with? At the dance.’ He had gone too far. He had to know.

There was a pause. ‘Listen, Art, I was going to tell you.’

‘What do you mean?’ He wanted to blot out the sheepish tone of Jack’s voice.

‘She was with me.’

‘But she’s…’ The words came out slowly, each one hurting his throat. He couldn’t say what she was.

‘Look, Art, I don’t know what she’s told you—’

‘Stop calling me that!’ As he shouted, the sound came again. Thin and high. Arthur felt a thickness in his head. Keep calm.

Jack was speaking again. ‘I like her. She’s smart.’

‘But Pete—’ He didn’t know why he said it, he was clutching desperately at something. It couldn’t be true.

‘Yeah, don’t tell him, not yet. He’s gonna blow a fuse.’

‘But the others, it’s not just her, is it?’ Behind his eyes, Arthur’s head throbbed. They had stopped rowing, and were drifting towards open water.

‘There aren’t any others. Not now.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘You aren’t still sweet on her, are you?’ Jack’s voice was falsely innocent. He knew.

Arthur breathed out an incoherent, rasping noise. He wanted to disappear, to sink into the darkness and never come back. He felt as if he might already have disappeared, he was so light, so weightless.

No one spoke. Jack made a kind of low whistle through his teeth but said nothing. Jack must know, from his silence, and that was almost worse than the treachery: the pity. Then he remembered her, out here somewhere in this endless night, and he shivered back into himself, felt the blood returning to his limbs, the anger simmering, and the pain sank into him like a stone.

It was funny, that this was the end of everything. That he could know it and yet keep on breathing.

*