Weather

She went out through the loading-door end and down the outside steps and along the quay to the lee of the harbourmaster’s hut, where there is about six feet of dry wall out of the wind, and she stood there with her arms folded and waited for me to catch up.

The tide was half out and moving. Rain going sideways under the lamp. Somewhere behind us in the granary somebody laughed, because a room of nineteen people cannot stay quiet for more than ninety seconds and should not be expected to.

“Right,” said Cleo. “Say it. All of it. Don’t manage me.”

“September 2019 to June 2021,” I said. “Twenty-one months.”

“Twenty-one months.”

“It started that September weekend you had everybody down here, the year after your mum. You went to bed at half one and I said I’d walk down to the quay and get some air, and…