‘We must return here, Harriet, when the gardens are in full bloom,’ said Mr Boothby.

Silas watched her nod her agreement, glance quickly at Silas and away.

‘So, are tha the Boothby of Boothby and Simpson?’ Silas asked.

‘I am. I’m a director, along with Harriet’s uncle, Walter Simpson.’

‘Ah,’ said Silas. ‘I’ve done some labourin’ for tha firm. Small world, innit?’

‘Indeed.’ Mr Boothby pursed his lips.

Silas caught Harriet’s eye and was gratified when she turned her back to Mr Boothby so he would not see the wide smile on her face.

The next day, Silas was sent to Brick Row to finish the job on a house that had been partially destroyed in the flood, a day’s work for a team of four men.

‘The fall is always quicker than the rise, eh?’ the foreman said, handing Silas a slim-handled masonry hammer. ‘Can’t go too quick, though, or it’ll be on tha head. Lit’rally!’

The three-storey building stood at the foot of a hill beneath a terrace of cottages that looked untouched by the flood. The wave had taken the side of it off. He’d heard of this house; it was famous in its way. A newspaper report dismissed by the regulars at the King’s Arms as overly sensational told the story of the brother of the tenant of the house. The tenant was called Joe Dyson and his brother had been asleep on the top floor when the wave hit. This brother smashed his way through the roof to sit there, naked as the day he was born, waiting for the waters to recede. No one seemed to know this man directly, or his name. He was always the friend of a friend or a cousin to the man who rented a grinder’s wheel at Neepsend. Unfortunately, Joe Dyson couldn’t confirm the tale because he was dead, along with his wife, five children and two lodgers.

Silas stood on rubble-strewn open ground that had once been the interior of the front parlour, looking up at the sky through a jagged hole in the roof tiles still hanging overhead, imagining Joe Dyson’s brother reaching his arms through it to the black night. On the walls, about twice Silas’s height, a tide line marked the level the waters had risen to. An engine from the fire office had already pumped out the flooded cellar, leaving a thick layer of rot and a scent that played around Silas’s nostrils, as far removed from the earthy, organic odour of the farm as it was possible to be. It was the smell of death.

He looked up, squinting against the white sky, to a small window at the apex of the gable end. The glass in its six tiny panes was intact. Not for much longer.

The foreman stamped over. ‘That were the brother’s bedroom. Bedrooms below all flooded to the ceiling, so the rest o’ ’em never stood a chance. It weren’t just the water, though. These houses were chucked up on contract. Flimsy as a sheet o’ paper. Come on, stop moonin’ about. Time to get the scaffold up, get this stinkin’ thing down.’