Jack and Catherine lay together in a kind of stupor. When they stepped out, the pale sun was huge on the Atlantic. Closer inland a grey haze enveloped everything. Ravens tossed themselves over the sea. A starling flew up from under a heap of car batteries that sat on the galvanize roof of a shed. Down below, the seaweed was ticking away in the fog. A coot was dabbing along on a small stream that ran down to the sea. Then came a shot. The coot gave a squawk of fear, and without once looking back at the young who were following her, nor her mate who was following her, she dived.

“I had a bad dream,” she said.

“What?”

She closed her arms about him.

“It’s lovely to feel you here,” she said.

“I think there is something wrong with me,” said Jack.

He sat up terrified. She found he was soaking. She towelled him down. But the band of burnished heat round his temple would not shift.

“It must have been your sweat I was wading through,” she said, “in the dream I had.”

Light-headed, she washed his face. The next time she woke he wasn’t there. She found him naked on his knees in the bathroom with his forehead placed against the cold tiles on the wall.

“Jack – what are you doing?”

“I’m trying to cool myself down.”

She knelt beside him.

“Don’t touch me,” said Jack.

“No, I won’t touch you,” she said.

“You promise me?”

“I promise you.”

“That’s all right then. You can stay there.”

“Now you will have to look after me,” she said.

“Don’t leave me alone in the house,” she said. “I dread being alone here these days.”

“Why has no one come to visit us?” she’d ask. “The only people we see are fishermen.”

“They have their own problems.”

“We’ve driven people away with our arguing,” declared Catherine.

“We’ve made mistakes,” agreed Jack.

“We are everything I used hate to see in other couples.” She sought out his eye. “Can you imagine a time when we might not be together?”

He thought a while.

“No.”

“And yet we should consider it.”

“I can’t.”

“I never realized how vulnerable we were,” then she added, “sexually.”

Everything was touched by a new grave hysteria. They talked of the possibilities of going sober, of remaining together all their natural lives.

“In Mayo?” asked Catherine.

“Why not?” he replied.

“I’ll have to think about it,” she said, half indignant, and half joking. “I’m lonely enough as it is. It makes me desperate to think of spending my whole life here.”

“Won’t I be with you?” he said.

“Will you?” she said.

She heard the key turn in the door and someone came running up the stairs. Sara rushed into her room.

“My God, Cathy,” she said, “What happened to your face?”

“I walked into a door.”

“You did not.”