He was standing behind the desk and I knew immediately that he’d seen me lock the door, but he did not comment.

Before him on the desk lay the birds, closed by death into teardrops, arranged into groups. A stack of the terns with their little black caps lay at the near end; two gannets were folded together like lovers. Finches in one pile, silver gulls in another.

There was no room on the desk for the food, but he gestured to the cabinet I had admired the previous day, took a calico cloth from a drawer and flung it over as a tablecloth. Then he picked up the two chairs and placed one at either end.

‘Two hours until my watch,’ he said. He made no comment about the fact that I had changed my mind.

I placed the food on our little setting and we began to eat. Behind him were the rows of preserving jars, their ranks now filling with all sorts of creatures I had not observed him collecting. With their differing fluid levels, I fancied the jars would sound a chromatic scale if struck. He began to talk about the work: he had netted a fish that day—a warty prowfish—which he thought to be the only such specimen ever taken beyond Sydney.

I listened to him, nodding and making admiring sounds while the fancy took hold at the back of my mind that this eminent man was my husband, with whom I discussed such matters every night over food I had made him. His struggles for recognition, his breathless discoveries, the perils of his fieldwork…And I would catch myself thinking this way and scoff at my ridiculous self.

As he spoke and I feigned attention, I knew it wasn’t the social standing of imagined matrimony that I desired. Had such a man been measuring flour or writing down lists of provisions I would have wanted him exactly the same. Matrimony was on a long list of desirable things that I had accepted were other women’s pleasures. The opportunity had passed for them to be mine, and I had made my peace. Now here, on this boat, he had renewed the possibility.

He shovelled great quantities of food into his mouth without interrupting the flow of his observations, gesturing grandly with his fork. How did such a civilised man miss so entirely the business of table manners? A childish quibble: he was preoccupied. Suddenly he was up, throwing his napkin onto the chair.

‘Look at this!’ he cried, returning from the shelves with a narrow box made from heavy card.