We collapse face down beside each other, coughing and shivering violently. My face is pressed into the sand. We must be on the beach on the north-east side of the island, having been dragged along by the tide. I try to lift my head to see but I can’t – I’m too weak to move. My lips have started chattering again, so hard my teeth feel like they might shatter. My muscles, too, are juddering as if a current of electricity is being shocked through me.

Liam staggers to his knees and then to his feet, hunched over, trembling. He grips my arm. ‘Get up,’ he orders, stammering through frozen lips.

I can’t.

‘Get up!’ he grunts again.

I try to open my eyes. His face swims in and out of focus. I can see though that his lips are blue, his skin white. He keeps pulling and I protest at first, but I manage to get to my hands and knees and then force myself to stand, my clothes waterlogged and clinging to my body. Liam takes my arm and we stagger up the beach.

My feet squelch in my shoes and all I want to do is collapse to the ground, curl into a ball, and sleep. I don’t know how I’m going to make it back to the cottage – it’s so far – but we do, heaving ourselves through the forest, Liam leading the way, hauling me along when I trip.

Finally, the cottage appears in the distance and we stagger across the clearing towards it, neither of us bothering to look out for the man with the gun. All I can think about is getting inside and standing under a hot shower, but as Liam digs for the key in his pocket, his frozen fingers making him fumble and drop it, I remember that there’s no electricity, no heating and no hot water. I want to cry.

Liam finally gets the door open and we fall inside. He makes straight for the front room and starts throwing the damp wood he brought in last night into the belly of the wood-burning stove. I collapse down on the floor beside him, tugging the blanket off the back of the chair and trying to wrap it around myself, though my hands are clumsy frozen claws.