After he’d come to, and they’d got their stories straight, she offered him a ride. It had happened about a month ago, she said. His heart. It wasn’t the first time he’d had problems with it. A fishing trawler had spotted the boat drifting about in the bay and called the coastguard. They reckoned he’d been in there for at least four days, his eyes looking at nothing but the wood they were pressed against. ‘He was a fucking bastard,’ she said. ‘Or used to be.’ She introduced herself as Helen. She reminded him a little of the Queen of England: something motionless about her hair. ‘He promised my mum the earth. She believed everything he said. She was Swiss and they met while he was working out there. Doing something with roofs. I am not totally sure. I know the Belltowers were a very grand family, but that he escaped from it all and did his best to make himself one of the people. Roofs were one of the ways he did it. But there was still a natural arrogance there. My mum, I think, found it very attractive. It wasn’t until later that she found out he was already married. By then, he’d vanished, and she had a couple of new things growing inside her. One was a permanent sense of mistrust. The other was me.’

‘He saved my life,’ he said.