‘These are exceptional nights,’ he said. ‘Have you noticed, the sky is oriented off the stern such that we cannot see the moon? Yet all is light out there. The moon’s not full, anyway, so whence comes all that glow? I suspect we are preoccupied with the moon and give too little thought to the role of the constellations.’

He took a cushion from the chair beside him and placed it on the floor. He sat, then finally eased himself to lie down with the cushion under his head. Now the light was all over him, making canyons in his clothes and great ranges of his powerful limbs. His face was healed by the light, unmarked and serene. I dabbed a fingertip on my tongue and extinguished the candle on the cabinet between our empty dishes. Now the light was stronger, the yellow gone from it. The panes of the window threw their shadows onto him; squares bent by the contours of his body.

I moved with the slip of inevitability to the floor and lay beside him. My arrival there did not cause him any surprise: his arm stretched lazily to find another cushion in the darkness behind him. I obliged him by lifting my head: he placed it underneath and then, after a time, his arms were around me, enclosing me in his world where the strange and wakeful night could intrude only in glowing and shadow. Deep in his chest and his neck I could smell him, neither fragrant nor sour but full of purpose.

He was kissing me then and it focused the whole of me into that one place as my fingers wandered the rough landscape of his cheek. My hair: his hands were in my hair and I could see it in the blue light spilling over his wrists and I exalted that my hair, the lure of me had captivated this man and I felt power and abandon in equal measure. He brought my hips hard against him and then took my waist in both his hands and lifted me so that I lay above him. I dragged downwards on his shirt, pressed a hand on his chest and the spill of his hair on the boards called some deep memory up inside me. His gaze drank me in; I understood that for him I was part of the mystery of this night. I was casting myself as a memory for him, to be preserved forever. Intoxicated by this idea, I drew the dress up and over my head and let the light fall over me.

I was in this state, fingers working buttons, when the reverie was shattered by the Moonbird’s bell. I heard the frustration hiss from my own mouth. I would talk to her, officious little boat, about having interrupted me thus.

‘My watch,’ he groaned. Perhaps I slumped a little, for he sat upright and kissed me on the forehead.