They found more and more things now, now the rising sea chewed away more broadly at the low clay coast.

‘Take it,’ he repeated to his son.

The nod his wife gave was almost imperceptible. As if she had heard him say, ‘We can’t take things with us, after all. Can we?’

Leo seemed to sense something extra from the brooch. Seemed about to speak.

But, ‘Did you hear the old bandstand has gone into the ocean?’ David cut off whatever it was Leo might have been about to say, indicating out to the peninsula, past the fishing boats rotting away upturned.

‘And you used to be able to walk all the way to Holland from here,’ he noted toyfully. ‘Do you want to take some limpets back with you? Better than that lamb . . .’

Leo still seemed to be communicating somehow with the brooch.

‘You know, they barely move more than half a metre from their home scar all their lives. They have a home scar. Chisel a little place out, limpets, on their rock.’

‘So you tell me every time,’ said Leo, patiently.

The sand martins were flicking by as the evening fell.

‘We used to dance in that bandstand. Before you were born. Your mother and I.’

*

David stood by the desalinator. There had been little sun all day and the water sat murky in the sea tank. Hardly any had worked through into the collecting vat. The dust of the previously scraped-off salt rainbowed a little in the evaporation chamber as the sun dropped.

He sensed Helen near. Did not take his eyes from the white dome, promising himself.

Don’t let it get the better of you. Not until the city berg’s gone by . . .

He imagined the extraordinary sight. A fleet of tugs fanned across the water, a giant chunk of ice.

‘You should have told him,’ Helen said.

There was the endless, comforting sea. He took her hand. Her nails still as smooth as the inside of a shell. Her old skin.

‘Then he’ll just wait,’ he said. ‘Won’t a shock be easier?’

CHAFFINCH

Tap tap. Tap tap.

There’s a bird. Repeatedly. Beating itself against the window of the meeting room, its wings raised viciously, beak open, smashing itself again and again against the solar glass.

We try to ignore it, but it doesn’t stop. It hisses like a reptile.

‘Switch the window to privacy,’ I say. The bird is defending itself from its reflection.

‘He’s trying to destroy the image of himself.’

They look at me strangely when I say this. The select covey of press. Here for facts on the Ice Dock. Given there’s a protest march this afternoon against it.

‘Why do you assume it’s a he?’ asks a skinny, nervous-looking guy. Colin, says his lanyard.

‘It’s a chaffinch,’ I say. ‘The females are more dull.’