She opens her eyes. The mist moves in eddies about her, but no heartrending vision comes this time. She leans forward and sets off once again at a smart pace. As the day breaks properly more of the lake is exposed, its shroud of vapor rising to reveal the silky surface shimmering beneath the autumn sun. Once again she experiences the frisson running close to the water gives her. It is as if by looking at it so frequently, by treading so near, she is controlling her fear of its depths, managing her phobia. For phobia it is, she has never been under any illusions about that. Her father had done his utmost to help her. Notes had been coming home from school—Tilda refuses to set foot in the swimming pool. Tilda must learn to swim but cannot be made to leave the changing room. Her mother had scolded and tutted and refused to have any patience with such silliness. Her father had taken it upon himself to Do Something Constructive. This involved Saturday mornings spent at the local baths, the two of them sitting on the wooden benches beside the baby pool, she in an inappropriately cheerful costume and tightly inflated water wings, he in beige checked shorts and baring an expanse of fuzzy chest and pasty belly. He had squeezed her hand firmly.

‘There is nothing to be frightened of, Little Rabbit. I’m here. I won’t let anything happen to you. It’s very shallow, you know. You could walk from one side to the other. Why don’t we just try that? A bit of walking, hmmm?’

‘But the water…’ Tilda, at eight years old, had been unable to make anyone understand what she felt. It wasn’t really that she believed she would drown, it was the water itself. The look of it. The way it moved. The feel of it as it pulled against her legs, disturbing her balance, threatening to topple her. And then, what? She had never been able to put her head beneath the surface, even in the bath. What would she do if she went under here? She caught her breath at the very thought of it. It would be like death, she was certain of it, like death swallowing you up, in a silent, airless place. People weren’t meant to go there. It was meant for fishes.

‘Daddy,’ she said at last, ‘I’m not a fish.’ It was the best she could do.

He looked at her, eyebrows raised, laughing not unkindly, patting her hand.

‘No, little one,’ he agreed. ‘You’re not a fish.’

She never had learned to swim, and even her father, the most tactful man she knew, had been unable to hide his astonishment that she should choose to live so close to a lake.

Ah, the things we do for love.