Logan throws the length of wood again and again, and Achilles retrieves it again and again, but her nose is still black. She doesn’t need to submerge her face to get the floating plank, only open her mouth. Somehow the top of her snout remains unwashed; the mud thick and sticky as tar.

It is clear Logan’s efforts are pointless. A feeling of great heaviness descends on him. He has lost his daughter and now he is losing his wife. His attempts to correct his errors with Jules are as effective as this useless mission to clean the dog’s snout. He may as well forget about trying to do anything, and just let things play out as they will. Hands in pockets, he turns his back on the horizon and starts clambering up the steep banks of pebbles to the grassy sward that runs along the coast road. He can hear Jules crunching after him. The dog follows too and then attempts to pass him, smacking him in the back of the knees with the piece of wood she wants to take home with them. He wrestles it out of her mouth. She barks and wags.

No! he says. Leave it!

He puts it on the ground with ceremony, warning the dog with a stern finger. The dog’s hope is never crushed. She looks from the wood to his face and back to the wood, wagging her tail, but No! he says again, and she gets the message, turning away in the direction he is walking and connecting her nose to the current of the greensward, tail up like an aerial. Perhaps that is why we keep dogs, he thinks. They remain hopeful. They take disappointment well. They are a model for living in the present, and making the best of things, that we can never hope to match.

Jules catches up with him and they walk, side by side.

There’s an outdoor tap, back at the house, she says.

He says nothing.

There’s a route through the copse here that connects back to the Ilex grove, she says.

He says nothing, but they turn up into the copse, putting the sea behind them.

Look, I’m sorry, she says, but you were gone. You weren’t there for me—

Don’t start this again, he says. Please.

They walk a little further. The copse is crossed here and there by the quiet roads that link the housing estate. When she sees one ahead, Jules says in a warning voice, Wait! Wait, and the dog waits, her hindquarters trembling fractionally over the leaf mould as she waits for her mistress to check nothing is coming and give the command. Over! says Jules, and the dog bounds across with renewed energy.