After he had gone, Nefyn pulled a blanket around her and went to sit on the bench that overlooked the cove. Whoever had built the whitewashed cottage knew to build it shoulder to the wind, keeping the windows on the less exposed side of the house. This meant that although you could feel the sea’s reverberations in the cottage, its sound and thin light, you could not see it. There were only four rooms: two bedrooms, low-ceilinged and cramped, a tiny kitchen and a living room with a fireplace and a slate floor. Perhaps, at one time, there had been a garden in front of the cottage, but it had been lost to the sea, inch by inch, tide by tide, so that now there was only room for a bench jostling for space amongst the lobster pots and piled-up floats. The sea had flooded the cove by now, deadening the sound of the shale, the water too full and heavy to make much noise.

Nefyn sat feeling her muscles soften, and watched as the water changed colour. Her mother had always teased them when they were children by asking them what colour the water was. How it seemed grey in winter, and black before a squall, how it was colourless over their feet in the shallows and stained indigo after a storm. She would laugh at them and say it could be any colour and no colour at all. Nefyn almost felt her cheek on hers as she whispered that the best questions had no answers. Although the morning light had strengthened, Nefyn had no expectations for what today would bring. The next few weeks would be measured out in a line of round white tablets. She closed her eyes and waited for the days to slip by.

4

Hikma ♦ Wisdom ♦ Doethineb

HAMZA HAD STARTED EATING. He had spent the first night – after the little bread that he had pushed into his mouth – lying on the floor of his cell, his body and bowel fighting against the food. In the early hours, he had pulled himself up and sat back against the bed, his throat burning with retching, his face damp with sweat as he waited for more spasms in his gut. He hallucinated, too, and saw a man who looked like his father but with the Doctor’s hands. And he had cried. Something he hadn’t done since he was first incarcerated in the first prison in the first country, not because of fear for his own safety, or pride, but because the outpouring of grief was so great, it was too much, and had become stuck in his throat. Each agony suspended. But now he had started weeping as he sat on the floor of his cell, forcing himself to live. He had pushed his face into the sheets and howled, realizing that freeing himself through death had now become an impossibility too.