He persuaded her to make up some emergency packages for the people with nothing and it gave him an excuse to get out of the dank, claustrophobic shop. They, like many other people in the town, had received gift packages from the airbase in Lakenheath – two bedsheets and two pillowcases – and the Canadians had sent food for schoolchildren – sardines, cod liver oil and malt, that kind of thing – but Arthur knew that the flood relief was going to be slow in arriving and most people had very little. As soon as he left the flat he felt as if he could breathe again. Although a faint odour of decay clung to the whole town, it was nothing compared to the smell in the shop. That stench travelled up the stairs and invaded their rooms: a persistent, overpowering tang of damp and sewage that got into your nostrils and tainted everything. He could barely eat in there any more. Everything tasted rotten. All the food and drink, even the boiled water they’d been told to drink, was infected with the reek of stinking mud and decaying carcasses. Despite his mother’s constant scrubbing and polishing, the shop itself felt permanently scarred and fouled. She rubbed and rubbed at it, but she couldn’t quite remove the dirty tide mark along the wall.

Out in the town, he delivered the small packages of tins and dried goods, salvaged from the wreckage. A policeman had brought his old bike back and, apart from signs of rust, it still worked fine. He looked at it as an artefact from a different time – a symbol of his demeaning job working for his mother even though it allowed him to get out. But the town was not the balm he hoped for when enveloped in the foul odour of the shop and flat. Cold grey skies pressed down on the broken town, littered with the filth and debris of the flood. There were still people camping out at the village hall, mostly those from the prefabs. He scanned the faces, wondering if any were those he had saved the night of the flood. But when they looked at him he was quick to shift his gaze because what had happened after that was too appalling to contemplate.

Afterwards, he wandered over to the beginning of Beach Road and the bank, reluctant to return home. From there you could see where the road ended abruptly and a great gash had been torn in the embankment by the raging sea. In all his dreams, he and Jack were in the boat and Jack was unmoving, his red hair hanging down, his face slack.