“The water’s up near Christopher now,” called Jack from the living room window.

Nana moaned. Christopher was her favourite and the last man standing; the others had been submerged hours ago, the tips of their little red hats disappearing under the rising water.

“I could nip out and grab him,” dad volunteered. “He’s not too far down…”

“It’s not worth risking for the sake of a gnome.” Even in the dark, I could hear the eyeroll in mum’s voice. “Christopher will be ok, Judy. After the storm we’ll fetch him out and give him a new coat of paint.”

Nana didn’t answer.

It was astonishing how quickly the stagnant canal had become a rushing torrent of filthy water, sweeping old bicycles, traffic cones and trolleys past Nana's window at unnerving speed.

We’d called 999 when things had started to get worse, before the power had gone completely. Because Nana's house was at the top of the hill, they'd asked us to sit tight and wait it out.

Since then we’d watched the canal water inch its way up the steep slope of Nana’s garden. Now water encircled her hill like a moat.

I cast the beam of my torch around the room. Dad was playing on his phone, Nana was knitting a terrapin-green jumper, fingers nimbly working stitches in the dark. Mum chewed her lips.

“Where’s Jack?” I asked.

He’d taken up his post at the window when the storm had really kicked off and had been offering a running commentary. But now his seat was empty.

Panic hit immediately.

Mum snatched my torch and dad leaped up, their feet stumbling as they searched the house for my stupid, reckless brother.

I looked at Nana, cold eyes determinedly down, fingers clenched around her knitting.

I imagined it; the touch of her cold, papery hand in the dark slipping a five pound note into his greedy little paw.

“Jack’s outside. He’s fine. He’s getting Christopher.”

“Bloody stupid boy,” roared dad, pelting downstairs and throwing open the window. “Jack!”

Perhaps if dad hadn’t shouted, Jack would have seen it coming. But he’d looked up at dad’s voice, knee deep in water and triumphantly holding Christopher aloft.

The tyre hit him in the back of the knees and threw him off balance. He fell into the surging water.

Mum was out the window in a flash, pelting across the ruined lawn in her socks. I could see Jack trying to stand but the water was too fast and too full of debris for him to manage it.

In the end it was Christopher who saved him. Jack managed to wedge him into a cluster of branches and used his bulk to stabilise himself. Mum walked him back up to the house, hugging him and shouting by turn.

At our window, mum took Christopher, looked directly into Nana’s eyes, and threw him onto the concrete patio. He smashed into a thousand red and blue fragments.

When Jack walked into the living room, before mum could whisk him off to warm and berate him, he placed a soggy fiver on the table beside Nana.

Wordlessly, she slipped it back into her purse.