Every time we go out west something happens.

This time, we bump down the track to the hut in darkness. Open doors and the air is fresh, cold and dizzy with stars. After we’ve eaten its coats on and down to the beach by starlight. We just follow the stream, and tumble down towards the ocean through a little thicket. Then- a gate- and the woods end. There’s the black shape of the valley against the stars. We carry on down towards the bare knuckles of the coast until granite pebbles are underfoot and the scrape and clatter of the sea drowns out the gurgling stream.

We want to keep going, so we clamber up one of the rocks that lie on the beach and follow it out until the water laps at us on three sides. She says we’re on the head of a lobster, and I see the claws of the cove held out in front of us, half-submerged. The ocean is another blackness; there is no moon to light its surface. But it’s there, coming quietly over the curve of the earth and jostling up against the rock.

We stay for a while, perching on a crag. A lighthouse winks. Now we’re right on the edge, we know that we’re out. We won’t be going back in for a few days. The stubborn mussel cracks an inch and the earth and the stars wash through.