She leans forward, elongating her neck, her face in profile. Looks out towards the world beyond the glass with a yearning that all but breaks him. He knows she is seeing something other than the greys and browns and shimmering silvers of the old, familiar view. She is not seeing the little patch of grass, nor the shingle-and-shale beach that lies between their own white-painted cottage and the brown waters of the Humber estuary. She is not seeing the majestic span of the bridge overhead, nor the black bulk of the woodland that hugs the coastline. She stares at something intangible; something that stirs her blood and chills his own. She is staring at the horizon. Yearning for something he cannot give.

He watches, his heart seeming to double in size. Around him, the air is so full of feeling that he could take it in his fist and squeeze tears from it.

‘Roisin …’

His voice soft, breathy, gentle.

She turns to him. There are tears on her cheeks. She sniffs and rubs a hand across her face. She tries to smile. It closes in on itself: petals at night-time.

‘Did I wake you?’

‘I always wake when you do.’

‘I’m sorry. Go back to sleep.’

‘Come back to bed.’

‘I will. I’m OK.’

‘Are you? I can hold you …’

‘No. Soon.’

Aector McAvoy gazes upon his wife down the length of his own naked body. Tries not to dwell upon his own ridiculousness and to focus instead upon his wife. His flesh is a map of scars and tortured flesh. He’s a big man. Huge. There’s the look of a sated Viking about him, in this light: his red hair and beard muted by the dark of the room. There is certainly no mistaking the strength in him. His arms, clasped at his sides, are barrel-thick, and his shoulders so broad that when his children sketch him, he rarely stays within the frame of the paper. He reaches out and strokes her side of the bed. Feels damp sheets. She’s had the dream again. Woken, drenched in sweat, and slithered her way to the window and the chill night air. Soon she will return. She will climb in beside him and rest her head upon his chest. He will wrap her in himself and allow her to seep into him. He will give her his warmth. And she will sleep. He, unsettled, will lie still. He will stare at the ceiling. He will fret, and worry, and try to fill his head with pleasing thoughts so they may silently transmute themselves into her essence and allow her to sleep sweetly. And he will tell himself that when she wakes, they will talk. That today will be the right time. That come the morning, he will be brave enough to ask her what she is hiding from him.

In the darkness, he swallows, drily. Shifts himself around with practised soundlessness. Their two children are asleep in the nearby rooms. Both are sound sleepers, but McAvoy is a considerate man. He has a big man’s fear of disgracing himself: of clumsily smashing precariously placed ornaments or crunching down on discarded toys with his size twelve feet. He tries again, desperate now.