On her small island of safety, perched like a rook in a tree on the edge of one of her father’s fields, Verity was shaken awake by a cry and thought it was the wind or the sea. She must have fallen asleep again. She must not sleep. The moon illuminated the scene in a wash of light: a drowned world, what was her world, fields now rivers and lakes. Behind her, the pinpricks of yellow light from the house and inside, her father, safe and asleep. She clutched Peter’s hip flask to her chest, like a talisman. Peter would come for her. She had to think it, although for all she knew, he hadn’t made it back to the house. He might think she was safe in the house, on its rise above the sea. She was so cold, she had taken her arms out of the sleeves of the mac and was hunched inside it. She could no longer feel her toes.

There was no point in cursing herself for her idiocy in setting forth from the safety of the farmhouse, for the loss of her torch, the flailing, splashing in the bitter cold seawater, until – beautiful luck – the semi-submerged tree saved her. She was lucky. This had to be believed. She took a tiny sip of the whisky from the flask, careful not to glug it down. A part of her tried to imagine she was on a Girl Guide mission where she had to make her supplies last. If she thought like this, she wouldn’t let the terror get to her. She was alive. The tide would ebb, maybe it was already ebbing. The image of her body, huddled, frozen stiff, found at dawn must be banished. The fire in her mouth distracted her, and burned its way down her insides. She had one cigarette left but so far had not been able to smoke it because of the impossibility of getting the Zippo to keep its flame in the wind. The Zippo had let her down. Why, she thought, if Jack loved her so much did he not come for her? Had he ever said he loved her? No. Stop it. Must stop it.

Where was Peter? Please let him come.

Gathering up her strength, she shouted again, ‘Peter!’

*

‘That’s her. I tell you, Art, it’s her, we’re getting close.’

Arthur was concentrating on rowing and only now did he try to picture her – where? What on earth was she doing out here? It was absolute madness. And where the bloody hell was Peter? He’d forgotten they’d come to help Peter, or so they’d pretended. And still, even in the strangeness of the dark, all he could see was an image of Jack and Verity dancing, twirling round and round in his head.

They returned her cry with their own.

*