It was almost ten when Tommy riddled down the upstairs fire. ‘’Tis a small mercy, but one I’m grateful for that the boats are out in the morning,’ said Maura.

The villagers lived by the tide and the light. As soon as it was fully dark, they made their way home, ready for an early catch on the boats or to lay the lobster pots, but it was not always so. If the fiddler or the storyteller called into the village, the wives and the children came too and not one of them left; at times it felt to Maura as though they had been taken over by squatters. The villagers drank until they could stand no more and slept where they fell, the wives and children too, with no catch the following day. Maura had resorted to dousing them with cold water, courtesy of her mop and bucket, to encourage them to move and her insistence that they left the inn and returned to their own homes had won her no friends amongst the locals, who knew no end to time, no urgency of need. Life was sun up, sun down, pots and boats out, pots and boats back in. Always, just enough to last until the next day. Life happened at a pace so slow Maura could barely comprehend how it was they existed at all.

As Tommy went to fetch peat sods to fill up the bucket, Maura washed up their cups in the small rear kitchen. She felt a sadness wash over her as she looked at her reflection in the mirror hanging next to the sink. She was ageing, she thought. Her face looked even thinner than usual. The sound of the wind and rain was so loud she almost couldn’t hear the radio. She half smiled as she remembered how often the women on the four streets complained about the wind that blew up from the Mersey.

Tommy came and slipped his arms around her waist. ‘Got you,’ he whispered into her ear. She hugged her husband and for a long, still moment they breathed as one.

‘I was just thinking to myself, how the women back at home—’

‘Here is home,’ Tommy corrected her.

‘No, I mean back on the four streets.’ She eased herself out of his embrace. ‘They should try a day living in a house facing the Atlantic. To think how much we moaned about the river Mersey. You can hardly hear yourself think in here for the noise. Do you think the ocean has ever got as far as the front door?’

Tommy wasn’t listening; his hands slipped down her back and cupped her buttocks as he began to kiss her neck.