My phone vibrates in my pocket and I almost drop the bucket. Most of the time it’s easy to forget I even have the thing. I empty the soil, wipe my hands and and flip the phone open. The battery’s low. I must have wandered into a rare bit of signal because the thing is buzzing for England. Seven missed calls from Mum and a message from an unknown number. Alex, it says, you need to come now. Sana. I stare at her name for too long. Wonder how she got hold of my number. Suddenly I’m sure my neck is burnt and I’ll be in agony with it all night. I’ll need to soak a hand towel in cold water and hold it there to calm the sting. I look back across the field, the gap in the wall so stark now, the sections on either side stepped down so that you can see all the inner workings, see the gaps where the heartings should be. I start to run.

I imagine, over the rise and past the next village, the old man waking up, moving his legs so the fields underneath him crumble and split. Pulling at the trees to free his hair, wrenching them up by their roots. When he breathes it sounds like the wind. He doesn’t stop to look where he puts his feet. He kicks a hole, for no good reason, in every wall he can find.

‘Sorry, have to go,’ I say to Keith, grabbing my bag, patting my pockets to make sure I have the car key.

He shrugs as if it makes no odds to him. ‘Gotta do what you gotta do,’ he says, and carries on working, checking the trench for stones and lumps, pushing the others to keep scraping out the soil, pointing out to them all the things that only he can see.

11:57 pm

These sheets are so tight and the

darkness    is here and the water

dripping

don’t think these hands will ever    mend  on their own.

There are things I have to tell him. They put me here and leave me here and nothing is settled.

And then one day, one magic day he’ll come this way and when he comes he’ll see to it all. He’ll find everything that’s lost. Every knee, every tongue, every pair of hands. There’ll be nothing left to do. When he comes he’ll open his arms and there’ll be so much light and green no one will stop us and the water will be gone forever and he’ll tell them all, he’ll remember, he’ll know the greatest thing – the important thing – the thing that’s always, always just a bit too far away to reach –

Repeat it so you’ll remember. Repeat it or you’ll only forget. The greatest thing you’ll ever learn, the greatest thing, the greatest thing is –

Acknowledgements