THE WORLD HAD FALLEN away. The only sound was the rain on the roof tiles, its gentle rhythm a reminder of life outside. He had laid her down. Closed his eyes and felt for her. He had seen primitive maps carved from wood, each indent a cove, a secret place, so that sailors could navigate at night under the stars. He understood them now as he began to know the tilt of her collarbone, the jut of her thigh. Her body at once ordinary and extraordinary. He had pressed her close, tasted her, but she was still unknowable. Like water somehow. She had studied him. Eyes open in the dark, her fingers entwined in his hair. Afterwards they had been silent, listening to the world turn.

When the rain stopped, they made their way outside to the bench where Nefyn seemed happiest. Hamza lit the inky sky with a hurricane lamp which illuminated the old floats hanging there in nets, like stained glass. Their reflections revealing a crescent moon, the stubborn stars. Nefyn sat, her legs across his lap, her mind far away.

‘I waited for you,’ she said eventually, ‘all those years.’

Hamza laid his head back, felt the warmth of her legs under his palms. Nefyn studied his face.

‘I knew you’d come.’

Hamza smiled. He thought about the sea, about the strandline. About the life he once lived. The words got caught in his throat. Nefyn watched him think.

‘Fatima, my wife, she died.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘No, my wife, Fatima, she was killed. Buying food. A stray bullet. It wasn’t meant for her.’ His voice had deepened now.

‘There was no sound, no one even noticed. She just dropped her bag. Slid to the floor.’

His face was drenched with the lamplight. ‘By the time I got there, they had taken her away. And I did not know how to feel. How can you feel something like that?’

Nefyn’s eyes darkened with tears. She reached out for his shoulder. Let her hand rest there. The lamp spluttered a moment, casting shadows around them, the ever-present sea murmuring below.