Through the adjoining wall he heard the back parlour clock chime the hour, inaccurately. It was two minutes to nine. He could hear Charlotte and Millicent talking in low voices, a soft music like water over stones. He ought to join them in their vigil.

He put his hand on the oak casing, waiting for the clock to come to life. The town clerk had told them that a mantel clock discovered intact in the ruins of a house at Hillsborough was stopped at twenty-seven minutes past midnight, and the claim was this indicated the exact time the wave hit that district. This seemed far-fetched but it had not seemed a point worth arguing.

The longcase clock chimed four times before it was drowned out by a volley of bangs on the back door of the house.

Chapter 18

Silas lay wrapped in blankets on the stone flags of the lounge room at the Red Lion. He’d fallen in with a rag-tag of homeless survivors who had been offered shelter for the night by the landlady of the inn. Lulled by the whispered tales of escape being told around the fireplace, his eyes closed, but sleep refused to come. He felt a nudge, his cheek gently dabbed by a cold wet nose and, without opening his eyes, he put his arm around the inn’s little dog that he’d made a fuss of earlier. The animal snuggled down in the crook of his arm and Silas folded his lips tightly and soundlessly allowed the tears to run unchecked down his cheeks.

Prone under a starched coverlet, Harriet watched guttering candlelight play across the ceiling of the unfamiliar bedroom. Mr Boothby had insisted the family spend the night at his property and Polly had been persuaded to make the journey when Walter told he she was free to remain in her own bed if she chose to take the risk of the house falling down around her ears. Walter had left Harriet and the Boothby’s maidservant to help settle her aunt and had ridden home to sit in the armchair he’d dragged from the master bedroom into the upstairs hallway that afternoon. He was waiting for Alice to return and could not be persuaded otherwise by Mr Boothby. Harriet had not spoken for fear of further riling him. She watched the haunting shadows thrown by the dying candle, praying tomorrow would bring news, while fearing it, too.

A dog was barking. Gunson marched to the end of the unlit corridor, aware of Charlotte and Millicent on his heels. He dismissed a fleeting thought that this was a mob come to drag him out of his house and set about him. But he could not deny he was rattled.

He hesitated. ‘Who’s there?’

But already Millicent was reaching past to twist the key, lift the latch and pull open the door. There was no mob. Only a young woman reaching out to embrace Millicent, a black and white collie dog leaping up and down at her side.