When you step into the grey boat it bows to the applauding waves and nods to those retreating and then it settles on its stage, poised to break into another round of curtain calls as the wind from the south hurls petals of spray. There are clouds flexing high and grinding so much sleet out of the air—it sparks against your face and tries to fill the boat like a great bowl of water, to be drunk by the ever-thirsty sea.

Your mother is wasting in her bed. Her skin is a poor, bedraggled blanket covering her body and her moans are the wind; they carry across the water as you bolt your feet to the centre of the deck, and even though the sleet is freezing your red flannel shirt to your back and the wind is tearing at its buttons, you find a certain stillness in all that storm.