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when I moved my mouth. Cold, salty spray showered my skin. Nearby, someone slept. I tugged on his shirt’s coarse material but to no avail.
    Eventually the rhythm of the sea and the swish-swish-swish of foam lulled me into lethargy. Can you sleep within sleep? I did – until roughened fingers tugged on my arm. He was silhouetted next to me, a shadow against grey.
    ‘Who are you?’ I asked.
    ‘You know me,’ he said.
    And I did. Hadn’t he come to my bed when I was small? Was it Grandad Colin? I’d never seen his face fully and I couldn’t now. I realised how dark it was at sea when clouds suffocated the moon and stars. I wished for the moon; then I’d see. I wished for a star or two; then I’d know.
    But I heard a voice saying, ‘Mrs Scott’ and knew real life beckoned. I resisted, reached for him, kept one toe in my dream.
    ‘Why are you here?’ I asked.
    ‘Because you called for me.’
    ‘Did I?’
    ‘Find the book,’ he said.
    ‘What book?’ I asked.
    And then a nurse shook me awake, into light.
    ‘The doctor’s on his way.’ She cut me free from my dream’s anchor and I drifted away. I resented her for severing the line. ‘If he gives us the say- so, you should be able to go home,’ she said.
    The words terrified me. Home was a place no safer than an abandoned boat now. I wasn’t sure I could do all the tests and injections there. Leaving the hospital with Rose, a box of diabetes paraphernalia, booklets and on-call numbers reminded me of when we’d taken her home from the hospital days after her birth and plonked her car seat in the middle of the living room and looked at one another in raw panic, saying, ‘What the hell do we do now?’
    But choice was not mine. Rose sat in the middle of her bed, face impassive. No joy at going home, no fear of what was ahead, no anything at all. A stain of orange juice circled the cow on her onesie pocket, like a protective halo. She shuffled back up the bed with her eyes closed, opening them only to stare out of the window.
    ‘That’s it?’ I asked the nurse.
    ‘That’s it,’ she said, and seemed to rethink. ‘Of course you’ll get all the support you need at home. You’ve got the hospital switchboard number too, yes? You’re aware of hypo management?’
    With Rose’s blood sugars still so high we’d not experienced hypos yet but Shelley had warned me of low blood sugars resulting in moodiness, confusion, and eventual unconsciousness if not treated with glucose. It felt like if we conquered one part of diabetes, another challenge would surface.
    ‘Shelley will visit you a couple of times in the next few weeks.’ The nurse paused. ‘I know how daunting it can be but it’s very rare a diagnosed child returns to the hospital.’
    I doubted there were any words she could have strung together that would lessen the weight of responsibility tightening every muscle in my neck. I should have said thank-you but was never very good at it. Instead, since action always distracts me, I got our things together and asked Rose to put on her day clothes.
    War Horse fell from under the pillow when she got off the bed. She ignored it so I picked it up, instinctively dusting down the jacket and looking inside. There was an inscription – Happy Christmas Rose, love Mum and Dad . We bought her at least one book every Christmas and on birthdays; we also rewarded good marks at school with them, and chose a surprise one if we went away.
    Find the book. My dream. Find the book , he’d said. Was War Horse the one I should seek? But we already had it, had never lost it. So which one was I supposed to look for?
    Find the book .
    But if I didn’t know which one, how on earth would I know where to look?

4
EVERY STORY WRITTEN
    One week over and no ship. Still hoping .
    K.C.
    Rose went missing six days after we got home.
    Like a shadow at dawn, she slipped away while I slept. I’d been dreaming of the ocean again. This time the sun joined me, bathing my surroundings in