So Hannah went off to fetch Mary and the door and Annie stayed behind with me and while they were gone Matthew High rose up slowly out of the muddy sand on the incoming tide. We took a hand and a foot each, Annie and I, and held him there while he rocked back and forth on the surface of the rising water. I looked at Annie. She was thinking about Bella, you could tell.

‘They will have to hurry,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘They will.’

You have to see the tide here to believe it: once it starts properly on its way – once it’s finished its long slow trickling start – it comes racing forward in a great greedy rush, and even floating in the water Matthew High was heavy and hard to hold onto and kept sinking down beneath the surface. I kept looking at Annie. I knew what she was thinking because I was thinking it too – that we could both of us let go of his hands and feet and leave him there till the tide turned and let him ride back out on it like a Viking and be dragged down by the current; the sea would take him and Bella would never know. I think there was a part in all of us that day that was tempted, even Hannah, and while I stood there in the freezing water with Annie Cotton, I thought, well, if they are too long we will just have to let go and that will be that and no one could ever blame us. Faster and faster the water rose up around our waists and our skirts swirled around us like weed on top of the grey water and so did Matthew High’s long thick hair. He lay between us like a big puffy eiderdown. There was a weight to him though, even in the water, a gravity. He was swollen and cold but he was so solid it made you want to cry out. I thought of Bella and I wanted more than anything to let him go, but we could see the others now, coming back with the door, Hannah trotting smartly in front, Mary behind.

‘Look,’ said Annie suddenly for the second time that day, and this time she was pointing to a shell, lodged in the mucky hollow where Matthew’s missing eye had been. It was small and white and shaped like a helter-skelter. I picked it out and closed my hand around it and pressed its point into my palm to feel the sharpness of the pain.