Nefyn had laid him inside her father’s broken boat. Tried to warm him with the sail. Then she had run all the way up the path to the cottage to fetch some of Joseph’s warm clothes and some water. She dragged the broken door closed behind her. He was still unconscious. She stepped into the boat beside him and placed a hand on his breastbone. He was cold now. Very cold. She set to work unbuttoning his shirt. Its thin blue material looked like a uniform, a row of numbers on a breast pocket. She pulled him towards her and pushed the sodden fabric over his shoulder before her eyes slid to the bruising on his side. He was thin. Dark maroon sores on the bottom of his spine. The bruising started under his arm and extended the length of his torso. She rolled him over again and removed his shirt, trying not to let him fall back on to the wooden boat. Joseph’s shirts were thick, heavy. She gathered the fabric, a sleeve in her hand, and pulled his fingers through before pushing the shirt on to his arm. She slid the material behind him before doing the same with his other arm. Her fingers were trembling with cold as she fumbled with the buttons. Painstakingly, she changed his clothes, her heart sinking at every bruise. She rolled his thin hips from side to side, covering him. Looking away as she worked, knowing he was getting colder and colder. Then, when she had finished, she folded a blanket under his head and around his body and sat back on her knees, exhausted. Although he was thin, he was heavy. Tall. His eye on one side was swollen, a gash deep on his forehead. There was no point offering him water. Nefyn listened to him breathing, the sound unfamiliar. Perhaps it was her tiredness but he looked at once completely real and entirely unreal. She had walked this way year after year. Sat in this boathouse time after time, and sharing it now seemed almost an impossibility. She got up and walked to the back of the boathouse. Here there were tools, her father’s fishing nets. More lobster pots. She found a hurricane lamp, half filled with oil, and a tin matchbox, the kind that all fishermen favoured. She struck a match and let the strip of oil-soaked fabric light and push away the gloom around her.