He threw the skillet down, making her jump, and suddenly his eyes flashed with anger. ‘It was that dam after all! That blasted dam!’

Harriet was afraid of him. This was the Walter who had screamed in her face during the long night prior. He had plunged into the black depths repeatedly, searching for his daughter, and when the waters slowly receded, had turned over every stick of furniture hoping to find Alice still alive. He had not found her yet. In the night, Harriet had dared to suggest Alice might have been swept along the road and rescued like the exhausted youth who lay in a stupor on the bedroom floor. Walter had roared at her. ‘She’s six years old! She can’t hang onto lamp-posts!’

He was staring at his hands now. They were filthy, streaked with dirt and blood.

‘You have hurt yourself,’ she whispered.

‘It’s nothing. I scratched my hands in the dark,’ he said.

Feeling for Alice’s soft body in the tangle of broken furniture. Harriet shuddered. Walter had saved his crippled niece, but did not rescue his daughter. He must wish it were the other way around.

He tapped the doorframe briskly. ‘We will have to do what we can with temporary repairs to the house. I shall call on my good friend Albert Boothby to send some men.’

She was aghast. ‘Uncle, we cannot stay here.’

‘My dear.’ He gave her a patient look. ‘We have to stay for when Alice comes home. What will she think if there’s nobody here? She’ll think we have all abandoned her—’

His eyes suddenly bulged and Harriet gasped as he grabbed her arm for support and vomited grey water onto the kitchen floor.

He straightened, gasping. ‘I’m sorry. I swallowed rather a lot of that filthy water.’

‘Uncle, please let’s go back upstairs,’ Harriet pleaded. ‘Just for a moment, to sit with Aunt.’

‘She’s in her bed, so no change there. The boys will look after her.’ He gestured around the kitchen. ‘The structural damage can be repaired, I believe. We have a lot of clearing up to do. Will Louisa be here today? Yes, we have a lot of work to do. Lots to do.’

Harriet shrank back as Walter stamped past. He had lost his senses. She followed him reluctantly towards the front of the house. He pointed to the plume of white smoke rising from the chimney of a neighbour’s house. ‘Come along, Harriet. Perhaps you’ll let our neighbours know our downstairs rooms were flooded and we have no wood or coal. Perhaps they will provide Polly with a cup of tea. Perhaps Alice is sitting by their fire eating crumpets for breakfast.’

Walter paused and grabbed his scalp with his fists. A low moan came from him that terrified Harriet. Then he stepped into the street and marched on without another word.

There was a creak from behind and Harriet jerked around. Alice! But it was Adam, standing on the stairs in his dressing gown, his hair stuck up on one side. Poor child.