‘We’re turning back at the next big puddle, that’s for sure.’

We headed up another hill and from the top saw the landscape spread out around us, the ground where it was raining and the ground where it wasn’t.

‘God, I just want to lie down here with you,’ I said.

‘Paul.’

‘Sorry. I don’t mean. Just all of this laid out for us. Don’t you just want to surrender to it?’

‘In the wet and the shit?’

We settled for standing up, watching the hillscape flicker between moods.

I realised we were on the right track when we began to see the signs: the Brontë bridge, the Brontë waterfall, and after a while we arrived at Top Withens, the ruins of Heathcliff’s prison. There was no roof. A ram with pink earrings and droopy horns stared mellowly from the doorway.

‘Do I get an NUS discount?’ I asked him.

Walkers were sitting on the walls, pouring cups of coffee and eating sandwiches. The sun was still out but the wind was picking up and made us put our jumpers back on. We poked around inside, and smiled at the other tourists. When we came out we could see the rain coming in towards us.

On the way back, running out of energy, wishing we’d brought food and water with us, we stopped talking. I was anxious that I wasn’t taking us the right way and she kept pulling her phone out and looking at it. But we reached the same gate in its pool of water. I picked her up once more, taking more notice this time of how her legs felt against my arms, exactly how her body filled the small space it had in this world, in my arms, right there. I walked her through the gate and set her down again.

*

The Black Bull is a big old place, with high windows looking out into the damp; full of friendly senior citizens eating pie and chips. We ordered drinks and I asked the young goth pouring them which was Branwell’s chair.

‘Oh, it’s up on the staircase on its own, up there,’ she pointed. ‘I doubt that’s where it was when he sat on it, unless he war a right miserable sod.’

‘I’ve never liked men in pubs who lay claim to their own seats,’ said Emily.

*

We stopped to pick up the papers from a newsagent on the way back to the station. ‘I’m ready once more to read about the destruction of contemporary society,’ said Emily. ‘Andrew should have something in today.’

And Sophie too, I thought, and when we were on the train I googled her name to find out where she’d placed her piece about the old betraying the young. I found her radio interview, but higher on Google’s ranking was another piece about intergenerational relationships that had also been published a couple of days ago.*