bumps down next to me and puts an arm under my shoulder to haul me upright. It is Andreas. I sit with my head on his shoulder and let him support me. It is cold but he makes me warm, and after a moment I can look up and try to work out what is happening.
There are three men in oilskin dungarees and thick jerseys, one at the wheel and one beside him in the half-shelter of the open wheelhouse, intent on the instruments. The third is forward in the bows, watching the walls of water rearing up and vertiginously dropping away, and shouting instructions back to his crew mates. It is several numbed minutes before I realise that the language they are using isn’t Turkish.
‘Where are we? Where are we going?’ I ask Andreas.
‘To somewhere safe,’ he tells me.
The tsunami wave struck the beach at Megalo Chorio at one twenty-six in the morning. It was generated by the shudders at the earthquake’s epicentre on the sea floor off the Turkish coast and instead of just the surface, as with ordinary waves whipped up by the wind, the whole body of the water was moving. In the shallow Aegean the wave rapidly built up to a swell of forty feet and it swept westwards at a speed of more than a hundred miles an hour.
Halemni was partially shielded from the full force of it by a scatter of small uninhabited islands to the south-east, but the impact was still massive. The wall of water thundered over the crescent of beach, uprooting half the fringe of tamarisk trees. It smashed into the village houses, surging the length of the street and through the square at the end. The houses were stonebuilt and so resisted the major shock, but the wave tore into the rooms and swirled out again, carrying a scum of broken furniture, papers, branches and ruined possessions with it. The half-built shells of flimsy concrete tourist apartments on the village outskirts collapsed like the hotels in Branc.
The wave finally collided with the hill behind the village and a backwash coursed through the houses and funnelled along the street in the opposite direction. Manolis’s blue wooden kiosk was swept away and the old fig tree in the square was torn in half. The harbour wall withstood most of the impact but the bay became a heaving morass of flotsam that crashed over the harbour with every succeeding wave.
After five minutes of booming water an eerie stillness settled over the houses again, fractured with dripping and gurgling, and the creaking of broken structures. The people of Megalo Chorio slowly released their hold on whatever fixed point they had clung to to stop being swept away, then paddled through their flooded bedrooms to open the shutters and look out into the street.
There was no power because the island’s generator station was flooded. One by one, points of candle flame wavered and steadied, and torch beams picked out the scum-laced khaki river where the cobbled road had once been. A dog howled somewhere and was answered by another.
Theo was screaming louder than the noise of the water. Georgi’s cries were lower and more confused.
Dazed with sleep but with the shock of sudden adrenalin pounding in them, Xan and Olivia stumbled out of bed and covered the soaking pitch-dark distance from their bedroom to their sons’ without stopping to light a candle or locate a torch. The familiar few steps had become an obstacle course of overturned furniture.
The screaming turned into hysterical crying as they plunged into the room.
‘I can’t see you,’ Georgi shouted.
‘I’m here. It’s all right. It’s a big wave, it’s gone.’
‘It’s coming back,’ the child sobbed.
Olivia found his shivering body and lifted him in her arms. ‘No, it won’t come back. You’re safe.’
Theo’s sobbing turned muffled as he clung to his father. His mattress was damp; thirteen feet above street level, the tide of water had just licked it. Xan held him, stroking his head with his free hand.
‘I want my man,’ he whimpered. ‘My red man.’
‘We need some light. Hold them both while I get the torches.’
Olivia and the boys crouched together on the raft of one of the beds. From beyond the window there was the noise of confused shouting. She hugged her children against her with their breathing interlacing in shocked gasps. They were alive and not hurt. Nothing else mattered, whatever might have happened downstairs, even if everything they owned was ruined. Gratitude hammered in her chest as she heard Xan running back to them. Torchlight sliced across the room and over their gaping faces.
‘Here. Put these around you.’
Dry blankets were bundled around the shivering children. Xan had a fistful of candles and he put these on the windowsill and struck a match. In the wavering soft light they stared at the room. Water had been driven up the stairwell and slopped through the door, then drained away in the wake of the racing wave. It had pulled the rug with it, and the toys scattered on the floor, and the baskets of clothes and shoes that stood beside the door. These were toppled and the contents lay spread along the landing and down the stairs, black with sea water and mud, and limed with grey scum.
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