The Landing Window

We did not say anything for the first two miles, and then the heater came on properly and Elias said, “Do you want chips?” and I laughed until I had to hold the door handle.

“It’s twenty past ten,” I said.

“Bea does chips till eleven for anybody who’s been working. I’m working. You’re working. That’s two of us.”

“You have just told me the worst thing about yourself in a field.”

“Yeah,” said Elias. “Hungry, though.”

So we had chips out of a bowl on the wall at the top of the slipway at twenty to eleven at night, and this is the part of the evening I would keep if I could only keep one part, which is not the part you would expect.

It had cleared. The low was coming but it had not got there yet, and the sky over the marsh had gone to that…