Now she begins to examine her prison. Her eyes adjust to the gloom so that she can make out a corrugated iron roof—which resounds to the beating of the relentless icy rain upon it—and wooden walls on three sides, one containing the barred door. The small window above where she sits is too narrow to pass through and too high to reach. The slimy floor on which she sits is actually a platform, an indoor jetty providing covered access to the space where a boat could be moored. But there is no boat, has not been for years. Decades. Just an empty rectangle of dark, evil-smelling water that laps at the rotting planks only a few short yards below Tilda’s feet. This entrance to the boathouse may once have let in light, but was long ago boarded up, from the ceiling to the water, so that only an uneven sliver of gray, a subtle lightening of the gloom, can be seen. The water at this point is overgrown with a tangle of reeds and rushes, so that it resembles more a swamp than a lake. With mounting horror Tilda realizes that the only possible way out is through that deep, weed-filled, treacherous water. She sits, benumbed by what has happened, stunned into motionless terror, her ears filled with the near-deafening sound of the incessant rain beating upon the old tin roof.

No one would hear me above the noise of this rain, no matter if I screamed my head off. And who would there be, anyway? In all the time I’ve been running this way, I’ve never met anyone so far from the footpath.

It is as if she has always known that one day it would come to this. One day she would have to face it. Her darkest fear has been there to test her from a distance all her life. Years of imagining, thinking, wondering what it would be like to be swallowed up by the waves, or swept away by a fast-flowing river, or held beneath the sunny surface of a sparkling swimming pool, all have led to this place, this moment.