I decided I should talk to her about her memories. This would give me some clues, and if I could get the people here to talk about dry land, then, somewhere, there would be dry land. The people and the scenery were connected, part of the same dream.

“So, where did you get on the boat?” I asked.
“Getting off again now,” she replied, and dived into the sea. As I waited, the turbulence above her subsided and became calm. I heard a thud behind me, and turned to see the woman climbing out of a trapdoor in the deck. With a joyful skip, she leapt into the ocean again.

Beneath the trapdoor was a ladder. I climbed down it and found myself in a huge green room, below me a swimming pool with an inflatable red boat floating in it. A young girl looked up and waved at me. “Aren’t you going to wave back?” she called.

No, I thought, holding on tight to the metal rails of the ladder …

… which vanished.

I fell into the pool. When I emerged, I was in the middle of the ocean, looking up at the woman on the boat.