The other message was from Liam. He’d sent it an hour ago, so I guessed he was in the air now, somewhere over the UK. He planned to drive straight from the airport, and out to the clubhouse on Texel where I’d be waiting for him to arrive in the late afternoon. He’d booked a room in a hotel on the mainland, Texel being perhaps too small and provincial for his city tastes.

I showered in the narrow bathroom, no bigger than a linen closet, then went hunting for food. There was fresh milk in the fridge and bread and eggs, as well as a strip of greasy bacon wrapped in wax paper. I found a blackened pan inside the weathered dresser and a lump of butter in the pantry sweating under its glass dome. The kitchen was soon full of the smell of sizzling bacon. After I’d finished eating, I felt more like myself. I washed up, then pulled on some clothes and walked down to the beach.

The day was warm. A light wind ruffled the surface of the water and the sky was a swathe of blue taffeta, shot through with silvery clouds. I stood on the shoreline and hugged my elbows, letting the wind tease my damp hair.

A shadow on the waves caught my attention. Too dark and mobile to be kelp, it moved with the rhythm of the ocean, slipping in and out of view, as hard to pin down as a broken reflection. A whiskery snout nudged the water’s surface and two eyes like glossy marbles fringed by thick lashes regarded me with a mixture of amusement and curiosity. Without warning, the creature disappeared in a trail of bubbles. I felt its absence manifest as a hollow ache in my chest. I began to pace along the wrack line, picking my way between strands of slippery kelp and broken shells as I scanned the breakers, searching for a sign. A pulse beat in my throat, like the echo of some long-remembered grief. Come back!

As silently as it had vanished, the seal reappeared, popping up less than twenty metres away from where I stood, just the barrier of the ocean surging between us.

I laughed, delighted.

‘That’s Hilde.’ Gerrit appeared beside me, wearing the same outfit as yesterday, although his trousers were more rumpled and a smear of egg stained his collar. He looked older, thinner. Dark shadows under bloodshot eyes.

‘She comes back every year around this time. I like to think it’s her, anyway. She isn’t tagged so there’s no real way of telling, except for the markings. She was one of my first.’

‘First what?’

‘First rescues.’ He raised a hand. As if magnetised, the seal surged through the water, her nostrils flared. Up close, I could better appreciate her colouring, the lichen-like blooms mottling her grey fur. There was something of the hungry waif about her. She watched us carefully with dark liquid eyes. Her pungent smell wafted towards us, overwhelmingly fishy.