‘When I was growing up I thought it was because they wanted to scare us. Keep us away from the sea.’ Hamza smiled. ‘Arianell was like … a light … you couldn’t help but turn towards her. I have never seen Nefyn. Is she the same?’

Hamza thought about her, drew her near in his mind.

‘Yes, she is.’

Emrys cleared his throat once more; he was coughing more these days, as if he couldn’t quite take a full breath.

‘Tell me,’ Emrys asked, ‘are you a religious man?’

Hamza considered.

‘I was. Then I wasn’t.’ His mind flitted back to a brick cell. Four walls. His brow furrowed. ‘I thought I had lost wonder. I thought I would never feel it again … but I have …’

Emrys studied his face. Interested. Intense.

‘Efa always tried to take me to that church,’ confided Emrys, ‘but my Mass was being with the sea. It felt closer to me.’

Hamza smiled, but Emrys seemed preoccupied, the window of clarity on his mind sharp.

‘I haven’t got much time left.’

‘Now come,’ Hamza cajoled.

‘Don’t, I like you too much for you to lie to me.’

Hamza’s smile faltered; he felt the weight of his words.

The old man continued, ‘You know, I think you have five or six moments in your life, where time … when you are connected to something bigger.’ Emrys’s eyes were damp. A clarity there that Hamza hadn’t seen before. ‘I felt it with Efa, when we were young, that moment when you can’t love someone more. And I could feel inside me everyone who was alive and everyone who had ever lived who had felt that way.’ Emrys’s hands were shaking now. ‘We never had children, so I can’t talk about that, but I felt it once when I was at sea. It was dark. The engine failed and I was alone. I looked out, and the sea was like glass. Not a whisper of wind. Its vastness. My smallness. And I felt everyone’s loneliness. Everyone in the world. It is those moments. Seconds. Fleeting.’ His voice quietened. ‘You see, those moments are the length of our lives.’ He looked up at Hamza, eyes glittering. ‘I am glad she brings you wonder,’ he said again.

Hamza smiled, and a comfortable silence fell between them. ‘The ones from the sea.’ He was out of breath now. ‘They know things, you know.’

Hamza looked at him, a question forming on his lips.

‘I don’t know what you mean?’

‘They know more things than you and I ever could.’ His eyes were fading. Hamza could see that. He was exhausted. ‘They can do things. That other people can’t.’

Hamza nodded. Emrys lowered his voice again. ‘They say they have power over life and death and the thin thread in between.’