Five days had passed. They were beginning to starve, but they didn’t know it yet. Like all people entering starvation, they dreamily talked all the time of food of every kind.

Finn was upstairs. He lay across the window seat, his cheek against the jamb of the open window, staring down into the distance, to the headland and the bay. He was cold, so he had a wool rug wrapped around him.

“Tell me how you made that stew,” Optima said from the glider below in the garden. She was wrapped up too. They were cold all the time, even on a hot day like today.

“I made it like Mam makes it.”

“But how! Go on. What did you put in it?”

He shifted himself up on his elbow and coughed. He was hoarse. “Well… I put the stove on. I could smell the woodsmoke when I opened the fire door. I got the black pot – you know, the little heavy Finnish one with the lid that sits snug in it? – and I put it on to heat, with a little olive oil in the bottom.”

“I thought the olive oil was all spilled when the plastic bottles collapsed?”

“No, there was the arquebina oil in the square glass bottle, the nice olive oil for the salads. So then when the oil was hot I crushed in some garlic, and I chopped an onion and put that in. Then when they were fragrant, a load of the meat, because it was all going to go bad where it was.”

“I can still taste it.”

“Then I peeled and chopped the carrots and parsnip and a yellow bell pepper, put them in, and chopped in a stock cube – and luckily there was some home-made stock in a glass bowl in the fridge, so I added that.”

“And what sauces did you put in then?”

Finn licked his lips. “Herbs – rosemary and thyme and a bit of oregano, and a bay leaf, and then I used the same stuff Mam always does – four anchovies, a good slosh of Worcester sauce and another of Angostura bitters, and about a cup of vermouth. I used the sweet vermouth, not the dry Martini.”

Optima looked up at him, and he saw that her eyes were sinking back into her thin face. “And then when it was done we had it with potatoes – you put the potatoes on top?”

“I did,” he said. “I let it bubble away for an hour, then I chopped up three big potatoes and laid them on the top and let it cook for another half-hour.”

“And we had it with butter mashed into the potatoes.”

Finn sat painfully up. “D’you know what I’d kill for now? Tinned peaches and fresh cream.”

“Warm scones fresh from the oven, crisp, with the butter melting off them, and strawberry jam.”

Yesterday, Optima had nearly been caught stealing a slab of 12 cans of tomatoes from a closed shop. She had got away, but only got home with two cans. She was keeping a small notebook in pencil, recording what she owed to shops. But the shops were nearly all empty now, and it was more and more dangerous.

“Uncle Des should be along any day,” she said. “And he can bring us out in the deep ocean to fish.”

“That’ll be nice,” said Finn, and he closed his eyes. He was sleeping a lot now.

When he opened them again, a boat was wheeling around the headland into the bay, its deep red sails bellying in the wind. He let a hoarse cry – “Optima! Uncle Des’s púcán!” and Optima staggered up out of the glider and he heard her racing up the stairs. She put her hand on his shoulder and leaned out. “I’ll get down to him and swim out, it’s the only way – if he comes in they’ll steal the boat.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

She slipped her feet into shoes and ran. In a lane above the sea she stripped to shirt and knickers. She stashed her clothes and shoes behind the castle’s garden wall, and walked down to the harbour.

A group of people were standing at the pier, looking anxiously around. Their clothes were a ragged mixture, any artificial fibre rotted away but wool, silk and pure cotton and linen left whole. They turned around and watched as she walked past them, then a woman ran up to Optima caught her by the hand. “Come on, that’s not the solution. Things will get better.” She put her arms around Optima, preventing her from walking farther.

“What?” Optima wriggled away from her.

A grizzled man came and put his hand on her shoulder. “Taking your own life isn’t going to solve anything, pet.”

“I’m not… What? No! I’m just swimming out…” But it was no use. They stood in her way every time she tried to get to the water. “All right, all right,” she said. “Thanks for the thought.” And she went up the road again, and cut down into the rocky cove behind the harbour. No one was guarding this, though she saw a woman peering out from behind the curtains of a bay-windowed house.

She waded in, shivering, and dipped herself into the water to accustom herself to the cold. Normally she’d go in, then out again a couple of times and wrap herself in a towel, so that her body would accustom itself gently to the temperature. But there wasn’t time now. She didn’t know if Uncle Des was going to keep his boat anchored here, or sail in to the pier.

She gasped as she went full-length in the icy waves, swam between the rocks and out. The tide was going out, so she let the current take her around the point, and then struck out for his sail. Furled, thank goodness.

He had anchored halfway between the harbour and the islands. She calculated that it would take her about fifteen minutes to get out to the púcán. She settled into a steady sidestroke, and soon she felt the tingling warmth come through her. Oh, but the sea was glorious. She could nearly forget what horror brought her here. There were cries from the shore – the anti-suicide squad had seen her – but no one came after her. After a while, it was like a meditation. A cold meditation. She wished she had some fins on her feet to speed her stroke.

She came up with the púcán at last, and saw her uncle on the deck, opening oysters with a little flat knife in his fist. She shouted, but he didn’t hear her at first.

“Des! Des!”

He looked around, got up and peered into the front of the boat, looked across at the horizon, and went back to shucking oysters.

He had the same look as her father, though Des was stockier in build: blue-black hair, pale eyes ringed with long black lashes, a gaunt face with high cheekbones and a long chin and nose – a western face.

“Uncle Des!” She called again and got no answer. Treading water, she took one hand out of the waves and stuck her finger and thumb in her mouth and whistled.

He came to the gunwale and looked over. “Well, there you are! Why didn’t you give me a call? Come on up!” and he went to drop a ladder over.

Optima backed water and said, “No! Des, there’s a problem. The plastic’s all… you see, we—”

He held up his hand, fast, and switched languages to warn her that someone was listening. “Bí ar d’airdeal. Tá duine taobh thiar duit ag éisteacht”

She looked behind her. Sure enough, the two people in the rowboat behind her were straining to listen. She swam in as close as she dared, and switched languages too. An experiment went wrong, she said, speaking fast and with the accents of the islands. It’s destroyed all the plastic. There was no guarantee that anyone listening wouldn’t understand, but it was safer than English.

Our mam told us to come to you, she said.

She waited. He gestured her away, and waved at the sea around her. She turned in the water, and saw that the sea was covered in dead and dying fish, with more coming up all the time. He had wondered, he said, why there were no boats in the bay, but he thought there must be a regatta he had not heard about.

“Téigí go dtí do sheanmháthair san ghleann rúnda.” He made a few more remarks about going to her loony plastic-hating grandma. A lovely way to speak about your mother, she thought, but didn’t say.

Then he turned and shouted “Ardaigh an seóil!” and she saw her cousins run and unfurl the sail. The anchor chain ground up past her.

She trod water as the púcán turned and sailed out into the bay. “Thanks a lot, Uncle Des,” she mumbled, and turned to fight the tide.

It took her half an hour, but the welcome from the anti-suicide crew was worth it.