Doggerland. Ben Smith

still, the waves would thud against the walls of the dock.

      He was here to do the job. He just needed to focus on doing the job.

      The boot-print didn’t match his own exactly – it was wider at the toe, and the heel was not worn-down like his was. The overalls were dirty and frayed where the boy would have repaired them. And he’d once tried the green sauce, dipping the tip of his finger in and licking it, and it had burned his tongue.

      The boy would step back, breathe on the mirror and wipe away the clean circle with his sleeve.

      Sometimes, on his way back to his room, another sound would work its way up through the vents from somewhere inside the rig. It would begin with something rasping, which would turn to an uneven rattle, then a stutter, like an engine struggling to start. The boy would follow it along the corridors, up the stairs and into the sleeping quarters. Sometimes it would stop for a moment and he would pause and wait. But it always started up again.

He’d first heard it a few weeks after he’d arrived on the farm. He’d followed the sound into the galley, where he’d found the old man curled on the floor, coughing and spasming. The boy had almost shouted for help, then remembered where they were. So he’d done the only thing he could – gone back out into the corridor and waited until he’d heard the old man get up and begin to move around again.

      He would take his watch out of his pocket and count the numbers. Sometimes it only lasted a couple of minutes; other times it went on for longer.

      He would wait a minute. Then two.

      After that first time, he’d expected the old man to say something, to tell him what was wrong. But the old man had never mentioned it, and the boy had never mentioned it, and so that was how it stood.

      All the boy knew was that it was better when the weather was warmer, worse when the old man spent hours out in the wind and rain checking his nets. A mug of homebrew seemed to hold it off, but if the old man got drunk and fell asleep at the galley table, he would always wake up coughing.

      After a while the boy had begun to see it as just another thing that happened: like the glitches in the computer system, the leaks in the vents, the cracks that spread endlessly through the rig, which the boy fixed only to find them creeping back again, almost too delicate to see.

      Five minutes. Six.

      Sometimes the sound turned harsher, more drawn-out. Sometimes the boy would take a slow breath in and picture the old man curled up on the floor, each cough ringing out like a radar blip with nothing to return the signal.

      Seven.

He would breathe out, put his watch in his pocket and walk quickly towards the old man’s room. But, just at that moment, the coughing would stop.

      The boy would stand still and bend his head, listening. There would be no sound. Nothing would move. Then, from far off in the corridors, the dripping would start up again.