"I can't."

"Wrap the baby, darling, and keep it warm. Dry it as quickly as you can."

"It's wrapped."

"No!" Sita heard Dean shout as if he had come out of a coma. "Why is he blue?"

Everyone felt the same surge of alarm.

"Rub the baby gently with another towel, little circular movements to get its circulation going," Sita shouted. "Wipe round his mouth and nose, get the mucus out of the way if you can."

"Yes."

"Jonathan? I'm waiting to hear a cry. I really need to hear a cry." Even her voice was strained to the limit now.

"So do I. Shall I smack him?"

Everything was very, very quiet.

And then it happened: a little mew, followed by a slightly louder one which turned into a soft bawl.

"There it is! That's it!" She could tell Jonathan was crying too now.

Suddenly, all talk merged.

"You did it."

"It was you."

"He's beautiful. Look at him, look at him."

"I love you."

"I'm so proud of you."

"I'm sorry. I'd forgotten how."

"So had I."

"Look at us."

Jonathan held the phone to his cheek as closely as Mog held her cheek to her little boy.

"Thank you, sweetheart," he whispered. "Thank you."

"You complete hero," Sita told him. "Well done, Jon, well done."

"Sita, can you come? I want you here."

"Do you?"

"Yes."

"Then I'm on my way."

And as Jonathan looked at Mog and Dean and their baby son, the blue of the fresh newborn face slowly and certainly turned to pink.

"Thank you," he said, into the phone, walking away for his own private moment. "I don't know what I would have done without you."

"You'd have coped."

"No, I wouldn't."

"Yes, you would."

"But thank God for you."

"And you."

"Yes."

"Just remember that," she said. "I'll see you in a minute. Put the kettle on."

"I will. I love you, Sita."

"And I love you too, Jon. I really do."

In the garden, Maya was waiting for an "I'm me" moment to arrive. She hadn't had one for a while, not since Mum had started locking herself in her sewing room. She was really looking forward to one-that funny, slightly spooky feeling that she was the one and only, that confirmation that she knew exactly who she was. They never came when you summoned them, though.

"Whatever she's supposedly making in that bloody room, it'd better be good," Niall had said sarcastically at supper last night, when Emmy's chair remained empty yet again. "It isn't anything," Maya had told him in secret later. "I know what Mum's like. She won't let me in to have a look. If she had done something, she'd show me. I bet it's just a load of half-started stuff like it usually is. I bet she's not working at all. Can't you smell the smoke?"

Now that Maya knew eggshell days were a continuing theme, she had decided she could more or less ignore them. She had even nearly been brave enough to go to the beach with the others without asking, in a defiant stand against her recent enforced grounding, but she'd lost her nerve at the last minute when she'd seen the red rims of Emmy's eyes. Better to make her own fun outside, within shouting distance but out of hissing range.

There were some things still to be thankful for. In London she would have been cooped up in the flat, forced to be in a bad mood too. She could remember all too clearly the way she used to feel before venturing into her mum's tiny bedroom once the tiny television in the tiny sitting room got a tiny bit boring, and asking her in a tiny voice when she was going to get up. It was about being a tiny bit frightened of getting shouted at, a tiny bit frightened of seeing her mum crying again, and a lot of being utterly bored with it all.

Now she could look on the bright side. At least she wasn't the only one who had to deal with them. At least she had Niall on tap whenever she wanted him. At least everything here was the opposite of tiny, even if it was the bad mood.

She ran between the massive granite gateposts that led to the main road, and hopped back over the low brick wall. As she landed, she felt the boggy marsh mud seep into the gap between her ankle and her trainer. The noise it made when she pulled her foot out was lovely, but she was too concerned about the hacksaw and the pruning shears in her pocket to do it again. She patted the side of her coat. The tools she needed to cut a big enough gap in the bushes to get the yellow dinghy through were safe inside, ready for work.

She and Jay had discovered the dinghy in the store, folded up behind the tractor. At first they'd ignored it, stepping on it, thinking it was an old coat or something, but then she'd noticed the rope and the oarlocks.

Jay had only started to help once she'd shouted, "Boat," so really it was more hers than his. If she'd shouted, "Old coat," he wouldn't have bothered.

Never mind, she thought philosophically, you live and learn. When you find something you would prefer to keep all to yourself, you keep your mouth shut. He had found the foot pump, though, and he'd made his calves ache by inflating it so quickly, so she'd promised she wouldn't take it on the water without him. But he'd have to hurry up. If he wasn't back by the time she'd finished cutting back the bamboo, she'd told him, she would carry on without him.

Emmy sat at her sewing machine, her bottom aching from the hours and hours she had sat in the same position. The chair was hard and the wooden base pressed into her increasingly fleshless buttocks. She wouldn't be surprised if she had a bruise, or the equivalent of a bedsore, if she could find the time to look.

Her foot pressed determinedly down on the pedal, her hands splayed on the meter of red satin as it trundled through the machine. On the floor were piles of fur, net and canvas. On the shelves were bags of zips, velcro, buttons.

She seamed, she zig-zagged, she reversed stitch. She smoked, stood up, walked around, had a think, then she sat back down again and set the stitch selector from smocking to stretch.

She was working like a woman possessed, because she was a woman possessed. She was pushing herself beyond her limits for the second time in her life, whipped on not by her own body but by the demons in her mind. She had to exorcise them. She would exorcise them. She would rise out of these ashes. She had to.

She made blind hems, fancy hems and buttonholes. She smoked some more, carefully, out of the window, away from the fabric. Then she cut out appliques, ignoring the sore pads on her fingers from all the scissor use, tacked in zips and attached velcro. When she made even the slightest error, she unpicked and repositioned. This had to be good. This had to be her best. She urged herself on. Come on Emmy. Push yourself. Believe in yourself. Show everyone you can do it. Get a life.

As she sewed, and pinned and tucked, she dreamed up things to say to Cathal, words to comfort Niall, examples to set Maya. When she thought she could do no more, she stretched her limbs, oiled the machine, replaced the needle, adjusted the bobbin. I will show them, she thought. I'll bloody show them. What she didn't realize was that she was already way into the second stage of showing herself.

There was a lot of weed on the surface of the pond which Maya decided to use to her advantage. If it was anchored by the green sludge, the dinghy was less likely to drift off before she was ready for it. She freed her trainers from the mud, took up the broom handle and pushed it as far as she could into the squishy ground. Then, using it as a stabilizer, she put one foot and then the other into the boat. It wobbled a little and Jay's pumping efforts began to look less impressive.

The front section could do with more air but she decided that the water was collecting in the bottom because she had climbed in too clumsily, and she was pleased with herself for bringing a beach bucket to bail it out.

She pulled the broom handle out and balanced herself with it. As soon as she found a little confidence in the floating properties of her vessel, she took her coat off and sat on it. The water permeated both the coat and her jeans, immediately soaking her bottom, not that she cared. Then she poked her stick into the bank to launch herself off, looking around for the oar she had brought from the store, a squat plastic paddle. She needed it to clear a path through the tangled weed, but it wasn't in the boat. Then she remembered. She had left it on the road, on the other side of the wall by the posts. Damn. Anyway, it was too late. She was away from the bank.

The boat could barely fight its way through the vegetation without help and she started to use the bucket. The water wasn't as cold as she'd thought it would be, but it was smelly, reminding her of rotten eggs or school cabbage.

If she could get to the other side of the pond without falling in, she would claim it as a success. She'd have to pick some of the yellow rhododendrons as proof, though, otherwise Jay would never believe her.

Cathal had his proof but it had got him nowhere, and there was nothing left to do. He was giving in and leaving. As the wheels of his car crunched their way reluctantly down the drive, he wished he had at least been able to say good-bye to Maya properly.

He hadn't slept for more than three hours at a time for the entire duration of his stay, which felt a lot longer than a mere five nights. He could see the last few grains of sand in the egg timer of opportunity dropping through the glass. He had tried everything he could to encourage Emmy to see it from his point of view, but she couldn't. He had even tried to persuade himself to bulldoze through regardless, to tell Maya and Niall himself, to push on with disclosure, to deal with the fallout single-handedly. But he just couldn't do that, either. The only fatherly thing he could possibly do was to leave, and so restore the mother to the child. Everything else would have to wait.

A dull envy lingered in him as he pulled himself away. Apart from Emmy, everyone at Bodinnick had made him feel welcome. He wished he could have responded more enthusiastically, been freer with his usually easy sense of fun and his gratitude, behaved less like a guest and more like just another member of the household. But he had been permanently wary of his responsibilities, straitjacketed by a fear that Emmy would turn it against him. He had never reacted to warmth quite so gingerly.

He felt completely empty and barely knew which way to turn as he approached the gateposts, but as he did he caught flashes of an orange and purple hat through the bamboo, and a glimmer of hope reappeared. Maya? He'd thought she was at the beach with the others.

His mind had played enough tricks on him lately for him not to trust it, so he stopped the car and kept watch. The orange and purple hat flashed past again, and this time he could make out a slight body beneath it, sitting in an inflated craft. He could tell, even with all the bamboo in the way, that the boat was gliding quite proficiently.

From the car window, he saw the gap that had been cut in the hedge. The pruning shears and the hacksaw were on the ground and two huge gunnera leaves lay on the drive.

His car inched on over the stalks, his mind less committed to leaving now, past the huge Cedar of Lebanon, past the line of granite mushrooms, through the granite posts he'd probably never be invited through again. He pushed himself on. Then he saw the discarded oar.

That was it. The olive branch. The excuse. The prop that would allow him to say good-bye. He pulled his car to one side of the faded tarmac apron in front of the low wall and got out. Just a good-bye, until they could say a proper hello. With the oar in his hand, he had an excuse. A shout from the bank would suffice.

On the other side, the edge of the pond was only just discernible from the mossy bank. He walked along the narrow, marshy edge, following her footprints, occasionally accidentally turning his foot over and staggering into the water. When he reached the gap she had cut in the gunnera, he saw drag marks of what must be the bottom of the boat. He also saw the sharp stone sticking up like a shark's fin in the middle of them, and the possibility that she might have ripped the rubber planted itself in his mind.

Everything he could see was green. The edges of the pond were green, the hedges around it were green, the weed on the pond was green. He couldn't see any orange and purple flashes anywhere. He scanned the scene for color. Then, with a stab of alarm, he saw the yellow dinghy, floating on its own in the middle of the pond.

Emmy, stopping for a glass of water, heard the shout and wondered idly what it was that Niall wanted Maya so urgently for. She thought he had gone cross country for an Aga part to see if he could get the cooker going again. A cold Aga was a strange and dead beast, she thought, touching it with her bare hand, which still throbbed from the vibration of the sewing machine.

She was in the kitchen, enjoying a freedom she hadn't tasted since Cathal's arrival. Ever since she had seen his good-bye note and checked that his car had gone, she had been wandering freely from room to room, taking stock of what had been going on in her enforced absence, enjoying the knowledge that she couldn't turn a corner or open a door and walk into him anymore.

Being downstairs again after so long in her garret reminded her of times in her childhood, before her mother had died, when she was allowed to get up after a day or two of illness. The house always looked tidier than she remembered it, more ghostly, like a stage set. Everyday things seemed unfamiliar. Smells seemed strange. There was the remainder of an apple crumble in the fridge that she hadn't seen either baked or eaten, there was mail on the side she hadn't sifted through, there was half a bottle of wine left by the Aga that she hadn't opened. It always struck her as otherworldly that normal life could go on without her.

"Maya?" she heard again.

This time, she turned off the tap and tried to work out what it was about Niall's voice that wasn't right. There was a politeness or a caution in it that wasn't usually present.

"Maya!"

The moment she realized what it was, she ran from the house in her socks, screaming the same name, only louder.

Cathal was down to his boxer shorts, t-shirt and bare feet before he knew it. The coldness of the water didn't register as he waded in up to his knees, not even feeling the slimy clay and sharp grit between his toes. He yelped when the water hit his balls, but forced his cumbersome body to surge through the weeds, clawing back the green fronds, trying not to let them tie him down.

"Maya! Maya!"

He was breathless but his roar, which came from the pit of his stomach, could be heard at the farm. Not so far away, Mog was making a similar noise and Mrs. Partridge would later claim she'd heard that one, too.

The surface of the weed was broken around the boat, which bobbed knowingly up and down. Emmy's high-pitch scream reached his ears above the splashing: "Where is she?"

He was working too hard against the vegetation to reply.

"Cathal! What's happening? Where's Maya? Is she all right?"

Emmy started to run round the pond's edge. It felt as if she had been scalped. Cathal was panicking-she could tell by the way his head swiveled, searching. Then she noticed his clothes heaped on the side. She had to reassess. He hadn't gone out in the boat with her. Perhaps he was rescuing her. Perhaps his presence was a godsend.

"Maya!" she shouted. "Maya, Cathal's coming. Hang on, Maya. Cathal's coming."

She ran, watching the surface of the pond, waiting for something to break. Cathal had reached the boat. He pulled the side down to check that the child wasn't lying still, for a joke, out of view. Maya's orange and purple hat was floating on the bottom, with her coat and four inches of water.

"No, no, no, no!" he heard himself cry. "Can she swim?" he shouted. His voice was breaking.

"Yes, she's a really good swimmer. What's happened? Get her for me, please get her!"

Emmy carried on running and he carried on swimming, moving toward each other. Cathal felt the far side of the pond scrape against his torso, and he hauled himself up, blue with cold. When he stood up, Emmy was right there. Weed hung from his hair and his wrists, and he was shivering with fear. The dread in their eyes was the same shade.

"Where is she?" Emmy sobbed. "Where is she? What happened?"

"We'll find her. Don't worry."

He pulled her to him, his hair dripping onto her, and put a tentative bare arm around her. She let him.

"It's going to be all right. She's okay, I know she is. It's just me. I panicked."

"Maya?" she shouted as loud as she could. "This is my fault," she said. "My selfishness. My-"

"No, stop that. It's going to be okay."