‘You see, at some point birds get old and they die. So you would think you’d find lots of them on the ground or would even be hit on the head by one every now and again, but no. That never happens. Where do you think they go, all those old birds from the sky?’

She looked at me.

‘I dunno.’

‘Nobody knows! It’s one of nature’s mysteries. It’s the same for old sailors like Grandpa. One day the sea just swallows them up the way the sky swallows up the birds.’

‘Mum, you don’t have to invent dumb stories for me. I’m not sad. Grandpa never gave a shit about me.’

‘We don’t say shit.’ I was so gobsmacked by the accuracy of her remark it was all I could come up with.

Once again, I set off for the island, just to show my face, because frankly there was nothing I could do there to be useful. The national rescue helicopter searched for him for several days, then we waited for the sea to reject him. In vain.

No church service, because he didn’t believe in God. Just a notice in the two papers, Ouest-France and Le Télégramme, and most important of all a round spent sitting passively and listening to his mates at the Kastel rattle on about how he was such a great fellow. The gendarmes gave me piles of documents to fill out for the legal process of acknowledgement of death reserved for those circumstances where there is no body, but I left them all sitting on the corner of a table. It was the only way I could think to honour his memory: not to bother with anything administrative, and to tell myself that it would take care of itself. Which it did.

Still, it was a long week I spent waiting for a boat to take me back. I scanned the horizon from the port jetty, at precisely the place where the women of the island had stood for centuries scanning for a son, a husband, a brother or a father who wouldn’t be returning. In my case, it wasn’t an anxious wait, but rather a peaceful moment of introspection. The sky was low and the weather was fine. Everything was calm and soft around the edges. A bit like if you’re sniffing ether or contemplating some great, empty space trying vaguely to remember what might have been there before.