In winter we are safe the frozen lake is impossible to cross. As we sit around the camp fire different voices offer their opinion.

‘Perhaps they won’t attack’

‘We’ll be ready when they do’ and Marty stands fist raised at the skies but his words are hollow.

We have made weapons from whatever we can find on this little island on the lake, but we are hungry constantly hungry. We ate the berries we could find, some made us sick but we had to eat. We killed any rabbits, then birds and finally rodents, scrabbling in the frozen soil for roots, all of us getting thinner by the day, weaker and more exhausted.

‘When the flowers bloom there will be food, something for us to eat at last’ I say wearily.

The oldest of us Shannon stands up and points over the lake to the town with its welcoming twists of smoke filling the skies, with the laughter we can hear, with the beat of drums, reminding us they are waiting. Waiting for the water to flow again so their boats can reach us.

‘When the flowers bloom, we’ll be doomed’ she says. And we know it, we have always known it.