The sun rose on the other side of the house from Cory’s room and the blinds were down, but I could still sense what we had in store: another day of honeyed light and long shadows, with the garden smelling of fruit and roses. Autumn was in the air, but only in as far as the daylight was richer and the colours warmer. It was still hot. I slipped jeans and a T-shirt over my swimming costume and didn’t bother with a jumper.

Cory was sleeping on his front, with his hands either side of his head and his face twisted toward me, his lips slack and slightly open. There were pink ridges on his back where the crumpled linen had left imprints, and I stooped to cover his shoulders with the duvet in case he got cold while I was out.

He always seemed so still when he was asleep—so calm and touching—and I wanted to kiss him but I didn’t dare. He needed to rest. God knows how long he’d been awake last night, working away at his paintings while I dozed and slept.

The room had changed a great deal since the night of our picnic. I hadn’t witnessed the beginning of the spring clean—Cory hadn’t asked for any help—but the next time I’d gone in I’d been hit by the smell of linseed oil, and my voice had echoed when I spoke, which wasn’t the case before. All the dusty frames and canvases that had been standing round the room with their faces to the walls were gone, leaving an airy emptiness behind.

Together, we had set up an easel in the middle of the floor, cleaned the brushes, sorted through the paints, sharpened the pencils, and unearthed stacks of paper and rolls of canvas. We’d brought a large, wobbly table from one of the downstairs rooms and set it up in the window so that I could work there on my poems. I liked to sit with my back to the view and my notebook open, watching Cory prime his canvases. I hadn’t written much yet—fourteen words, to be precise—but I wasn’t worried. So many thoughts flowed through my mind as I sat at that table, in my Byrne Hall idyll, and I never doubted that they were gathering and settling, ready to be ordered into sentences. Someday soon—when this holiday was over, in that vaguely conceived future I’d have to create for myself in London—I would set them down on paper.