Then in the flare of a bright light – a torch – the rest of the body is illuminated, hanging, up-ended, ghoulishly white. The legs are twisted up, the face in shock, like a puppet thrown from the sky.

The train whistles and Verity starts. Through the smeared glass, a shaft of sun breaks through the cloud, illuminating the window and blinding her temporarily.

PART 1

LOW TIDE

May 1952

Nine months before the flood

Temperatures above average for the time of year
Fog expected on the coast
Waxing crescent moon

1.

Verity was jittery. As she walked towards the woods on her way to see Arthur, the barley sheaves scratched her bare legs. She was glad to get out of the gloomy house where no one spoke of anything that mattered. Pollen caught in her nose, making her sneeze. It had been a day like this then too, the day her mother died. The same sudden heat and sunlight. The same grass-green and dazzling white sprung up on all sides. The same tang of manure from the fields. Everything erupting, spilling over with life. It had been the wrong kind of day to die. Too much life. In a burst of impatience, she took long strides to the last field, stopping short at the sight of the pines that divided the land and marsh from the sea. Mother must also have walked this way that day. It was the route Verity had later run down, desperate to see for herself. As she had then, she stood still on this spot, transfixed by the way the trees curled along the coastline in a long spine of darkness. There had been a sudden feeling of plunging, of vertigo. Her brother had been forced to hold her back.

They hadn’t let her see the body but in her mind she saw it as a beached fish, silver-coloured, curled and semi-translucent, shining in the pale spring morning. An aberration.

*