It rained in the Lakes, and the hills were grey. When the rain stopped and the sun came out the hills were purple and the sky was blue. Jonathan took pictures in black-and-white. Why do that, she wanted to say, when there are these colours? It’s the colours that make the place so beautiful. But he was seeing the curves of the hills and the sheen of the lakes, and the way the light came between the clouds and fell across them. It made her aware of things like that, travelling with Jonathan. She started to see what he saw, what she might not have seen for herself. She began to see where he would take his pictures – or if not where, then when. What concerned him might be the light or the shadows, not the colours or even the forms. The moving things, the moment, the places between, and how he might catch them.

One day they climbed a mountain into a big wind. She stood at the top with her arms out like an aeroplane falling forward into the wind but the wind kept her upright. She could see the horizon where the wind came from, and a lake dark in the valley deep below, and cloud moving through the valley. She called to Jonathan, her words carried back on the wind, and he came and stood there too and put out his arms. Then the wind blew the cloud up from the valley. They could feel the cold and the moistness of it before it reached them, swirling up and hiding the lake and then all the land below until there was no view any more but only cloud, and he pulled her close and put his arms around her.

Do you still love me? she said. She said it again, loud. She had to speak loudly as the wind took her words away.

Of course I love you.

Do you love me as much as you did in Japan?

Of course.

Sometimes I think it’s different, now you’re in England.

Why should it be different?

His face was cool, damp with the mist.

Just that things are different here.

Maybe it’s you that’s different.

Wind. Cloud. Words blown about in the cloud. He. She. One of them. Different.

Maybe he was no different, she thought in that moment. Only the place. That was what was wrong. What seemed free in Japan was no longer freedom once he was home.

She remembered why he had left Japan, or why he said he was leaving. I’m not Japanese, am I? I’m outside of it all. I can only watch and not touch.

But that’s your job, she said, that’s being a photographer. That’s who you are. You watch. You look. You see, and you show us things about the world we live in that we don’t know we’ve seen.