Hamza studied her. He had been trying to pinpoint exactly what was different about her. Perhaps it was a stillness. Her acceptance. He couldn’t quite find the words for it. She sat down opposite him. He looked at her for a while. Considered whether to confide in her, but the words came anyway.

‘That name … The name you heard me calling. Hussein.’ He studied the rim of the cup for a moment, pressed his thumbnail into it. ‘Hussein is my son,’ he said simply. He dug up the name as if from soil. Brushed it clean. Nefyn nodded.

‘And he’s at home?’ she asked.

Hamza’s eyes flittered.

‘I don’t know.’ His voice was heavy, translucent with tears. ‘He was only a boy when … He would be fourteen now. Nearly a man.’ He stopped for a moment. Hamza looked down. ‘Don’t you see? I have lost him anyway.’ Nefyn’s face became troubled. ‘Perhaps, coming back to life … perhaps it is too hard.’ Nefyn studied his face silently. Hamza smiled. ‘When we first met, you said that nothing is impossible, but …’

The fog still clung to the cottage. Thick and stubborn. Enclosing it in greyness. Time seemed erased by the lack of clarity between night and day. Each sleep ending when it needed to. Each day.

‘You know, my wife, she used to tell him, “Go ask your father about his maps.” It was her way of letting me know to keep him out of her way for a while.’ Nefyn smiled. ‘I would pull him into my lap, bury my face in his hair and tell him stories. Hold him, his skin on my cheek … burning me almost, he was so alive to me.’

Nefyn watched as he saw his son in his mind’s eye. ‘Now it feels almost impossible that he exists. A young man. Strong. Broad shoulders. Perhaps he has a beard.’ He laughed. ‘The beginnings of a beard.’ Hamza shook his head. Thought for a moment. ‘His life seems more impossible than death. And in my mind, I am still holding him in my lap. Whispering stories to him.’

Nefyn’s eyes widened.

‘Sometimes a story is enough,’ she said.

Hamza looked at her, let the silence between them grow. She began again uncertainly.

‘My mother. When I was a girl …’ She was cupping the tea with her hands now. She looked up again, searched his face for something and, having found it, said, ‘She used to tell me a story. She said that she was different. She said that she came from the sea.’ She waited for his expression to change, but it didn’t. ‘She was of the sea.’

‘Atargatis,’ Hamza said. She looked at him, puzzled. ‘She was an ancient goddess from my country,’ he explained. Nefyn smiled and continued.