I have all these separate boxes inside me, she thought. And in all of them are bits of me but I don’t know in which one is the important bit. I don’t know how to choose the right box.

*

In the deep quiet of winter at the end of the year, Verity met Jack at the usual time. Unusually, he was already at the tumbling down shack. When she opened the door to the bedroom, he jumped back from the wardrobe. She was about to ask what he was doing but he said, ‘Look,’ and pointed out of the window.

The entire glass was filled with swirling black dots against a peach sky. It was dusk and pink-footed geese were returning from the inland fields to roost on the creeks and reed beds of the marsh, and the shack filled with the unk-unk of their call. Kneeling at the window ledge, he took photographs, then sat back on the bed next to her and they watched the whirling birds together, his arm around her. The geese wheeled and fell, swooping down to the horizon where they came up against the land and, in a flurry, came to rest. It filled her with a kind of exultation, recalled the waves of mind-obliterating intensity she felt on the floor with Jack.

‘I’ve got something for you,’ he said. ‘Close your eyes.’

She glanced at the wardrobe, wondering if he’d hidden something in there for her, then did as he asked. Perhaps he would kiss her, give her some earrings, something romantic, sentimental but innocuous. Instead, he put a rectangle of card into her hand. She opened her eyes. It was a postcard of a Turner painting. At first, she was disappointed. Turner was last century. It was history and she was sick of history.

‘It’s called Snow Storm. It reminded me of here. I know you said you liked modern painting but I couldn’t find anything. Anyway, look at it, it’s crazy, wild.’

She did look. It was a snow storm at sea, a dark whoosh of paint above a floundering smudge of a boat. The sky was filled with dark and light. She turned it over. To V love J was written in black ink sprawled over the back.

‘Thank you,’ she said, strangely embarrassed.

‘That’s not all,’ he said, like a magician, his hand behind his back. ‘I thought you’d like this too.’ It was a yellowed, crumpled exhibition guide from a Rothko show in New York the year before. The main picture was of a strange painting, with a creamy, sand-coloured background and two figures – for she was sure that’s what they were – in geometric lines and curves, of red, green, blue and white.

‘That one’s called Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea. I liked the title.’

‘How on earth did you find this?’