That was another thing he made himself not think about. In the tougher moments he imagined her rattling about the empty house like a wooden ball. Taking a radio to bed.

*

‘Leo!’ His son was early. ‘Look at you!’

David scratched the paddle of driftwood round the inside of the desalinator, cleaning the evaporation chamber.

‘How’s the beach?’ asked Leo.

‘I saw another iceberg!’

*

‘I’ve near forgotten how to cook them,’ Helen said, looking at the lamb chops.

‘From the new-farm,’ Leo said.

‘Just because you didn’t want to eat our limpets!’

Leo smiled.

‘It’s good to have it. Sheep. Milking cows. And they gave us chickens to look after ourselves.’

‘Chickens!’

Leo smiled again.

‘Our group of accommopods,’ he said. ‘We have a veg patch too.’

‘You’ll be running black market lamb chops up and down the country soon. No more of this bland stuff those superfarms grow. In the city’s soil.’

David looked at his son. A cohesion had come to him. When he’d left a few years past for work at the reservoir there’d been a jerkiness about him. A need to go. Always a mechanic, this one. Ruth, on the other hand, was a carer from the start. Had more time for living things.

It was no surprise when Leo took a job with the Water Train. The scale of the thing, the awesomeness of transporting that much water; the science of it! Leo looked strong, like he was stepping towards a life he understood.

‘And, you didn’t bring Cora! Afraid I’ll steal her from you? How did a grease monkey like you pull a woman with her brains? What is it that she does, again?’

‘She’s a thermo-fiuctuationist.’

‘What’s a thermo-fiuctuationist?’

‘What’s a grease monkey?’

‘I guess I’ll just grill them,’ Helen said, staring at the chops.

*

Having got used to living without red meat, the smell of the cooking lamb brought on a temporary insanity. David had to stand outside.

The windowsills were heavy with lumps of rock and fossils. The strange curl of an ammonite.

‘So you’re not going to move?’ said Leo.

Most people had opted to take the government relocation money.

‘Careful what you wish for. These lamb chops. You might find us bunking in with you.’

‘Dad,’ said Leo patiently.

David looked at the bleached log of driftwood riddled with shipworm, the tunnelled shells embedded in the wood. He and Leo had carried it up from the beach last time he was here.

‘Can non-workers move in?’ asked David.

‘Family, yes. In certain circumstances.’

David found he had to turn away from Leo then. He hadn’t been able to imagine Helen having to stay with Ruth, as Ruth would want. Couldn’t imagine her happy in the city. With Leo, she’d have space, and scale. And chickens, he tried to cheer himself.