I couldn’t summon the energy to do anything except crawl into bed. I slept almost the whole way through the night, waking only once to stare around the dark room in confusion. In that strange liminal space, temporally untethered, I waited for the bookshelves of my bedroom to materialise, for the old wooden dresser to appear. Then I heard the rhythmic crash of waves. Sinking back onto the mattress, I didn’t stir again until it was morning. When I sat up, the sun was streaming through the curtains, painting the whitewashed wall a fiery orange. The clock beside the bed read eight o’clock.

An email and a message were waiting on my phone. I scanned them quickly.

There’s no hot water! Marieke had written. I think the tank’s failed. I’ve tried phoning the plumber, but he won’t return my calls. I can’t run a bath. When will you be home to help?

I was tempted to reply that the reason the plumber refused to speak to her was because the last time we’d called him out to the house, she’d asked for his opinion regarding the recent election then shouted at him for voting for the wrong person. Instead, I googled another local plumber and forwarded the details on.

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.