In one of the less hospitable notches of east Irish coastline lay an outcrop of scattershot buildings that passed for the fishing village of Duncade. It held, for some, a certain unrefined beauty in its mess of lethal black rocks and its sagging grey skies, but to most it was best forgotten, a dead end populated by hostile fishermen and the occasional unfortunate tourist. A small collection of cottages had spilt around the quay in a clumsy huddle, some of which were long abandoned and seeped black mould between their boarded windows. At dawn, even the more resentful of Duncade's inhabitants could be pushed to admit that the village took on a brief, austere charm as the early light caught these cottages and set a gentle chill glow alight amongst them. The white cottage at the end of the quay always caught the sun before its larger, livelier brothers, some of which still housed married couples, children, family pets: small hopes for future lives. As dawn slid from house to house their lights would flicker on in a wave as their occupants dragged themselves into another cold day. But the first cottage, the white one with the window boxes, that one remained dark. Its owner did not like to waste electricity.

He rose with the sunrise. In the empty darkness of his home he began the days with his palms pressed against his splintery floorboards, counting push-ups, eyes fixed on something far, far away from the floor in front of him. He washed and dressed in darkness, ate kippers and mushrooms and eggs in darkness. Some days, even now, he would start to make a cup of coffee. And then he would remember no one in his home drank coffee.

The front door of the white cottage always opened approximately an hour after sunrise, though the house held no clocks so its owner remained unaware of his punctuality. Today, like every day, he emerged into the dim wind-chill of the dawn and paused, as he always did, to survey the sky and the low, half-asleep Irish sea before him. He wore a raincoat to ward off the sea-spray and the sheet rains that were so common in the little village, and in one hand he held a book. A different book each day. Today, slim and green; yesterday, aged and pale yellow.

The man set off at a wide, slow pace up the steep hillside that protected the quay from the more vicious winds that blew in from the east. Above, gulls flecked the sky and heather-grey clouds crowded the pale sun.

None of the few half-drowsy, salt-drenched fishermen spoke to the man as he passed, but with several he exchanged nods of acknowledgement. He had no friends here, and he preferred it that way. Many rumours swirled after him, this strange giant of a man who had appeared out of nowhere and lived alone in a cottage with a security system worth more than the cottage itself. This strange man with his French niece, his foreign features, his polite but intimidating manner. When the locals asked his name, Butler told them it was Alan and when they asked his purpose in tumbledown Duncade he answered that he was on a long holiday. Most assumed he was a widower mourning the death of his wife, or perhaps a child as well. But no one inquired further.

Butler had at first felt only impassivity to the little village of Duncade, but a year of its company had softened him to its rude charms. He liked the everpresent sound of the waves, he liked purchasing fresh fish to eat each day at the harbour, he liked the bench on which he sat each morning and read within the roaring wind. He did not love the village, he simply existed in it. He had never loved anything with much intensity, except of course Artemis and Juliet. When Juliet or Minerva visited he would resurface temporarily from the murk through which his mind usually drifted, but mostly he was just there. A psychiatrist might call it depression; to Butler it was simply the nature of living. His life had been a series of jobs, tasks, occupations. And Artemis had been the most important occupation he had ever had. Now his sole purpose was to wait.

Even after a year he would forget that Artemis was gone. He would go by the corner shop to buy bread and find himself at the counter with a jar of black olives in the other hand, even though he had never liked olives. He would wake up distressed that he could not remember what coffee Artemis had wanted with breakfast that morning. He would find a passage in one of his many books that Artemis might find entertaining and begin to read it aloud. And after all these moments he would remember, with the dull surprise of someone who has, again, forgotten to buy milk and found the fridge empty, that Artemis was gone.

Butler had hoped to return to how life had been before Artemis, full of arbitrary purpose and unappreciated victories. It would provide a kind of frenetic hibernation to occupy him until Artemis returned. But all he felt was absence. After fourteen years in the boy's company he saw flashes of him everywhere. Daily he would mistake part of the wet, crow-black coastal rock for a shock of Artemis's hair, or the slivers of cold white sand for bones. He had been assured that Artemis would emerge from those waters somehow alive, and yet every day he found himself scouring the shoreline for little adolescent corpses. His mind refused to relinquish the habit of worrying about Artemis. It was exhausting.

He found he was happiest when reading, for which he was eternally thankful to Minerva. Every holiday she brought him a stack of books and in her absence he would work through them steadily, trying to lose himself in the worlds of Peake, Austen, Joyce, Dickens. Sometimes it worked, and those were the easiest times. He would settle himself at the top of the hill, a jagged silhouette on the ravaged grassy outlook, and pore through page after page after page of lives that took him, for brief merciful moments, away from his own.

Butler had been living in Duncade and following this routine for six months when his morning readings acquired a visitor. Daily a thin, weathered figure would make her careful way up the hillside and at the top she would pause, taking in the view of nothingness and pounding black Irish waters. And for the last few months she had taken to exchanging words with the strange hulking man who had appeared so suddenly in her little hometown village.

'Good morning, Alan.' Her voice was a dry rural brogue and her face thin and faintly wrinkled, that of a sunflower wilting slightly in the sun. Every day she wore one of several nigh-identical worn cardigans and ankle-length skirts embossed with brown flowers.

Butler nodded his head respectfully. 'Good morning, Mrs Canny.'

She gave him the same wan, fond smile she always did when she paused in her constitutional to linger, as she daily did, by the man with whom she almost shared a friendship.

'Are you going to the harbour today?' asked Butler, for it was Mrs Canny's long-standing habit to begin her mornings with a walk to the harbour to buy mackerel or lamprey for lunch. She had twice invited Butler to these meals and he had twice, politely, declined. She seemed to find this relieving.

'I'm going to church today. It's October the twelfth.'

Butler remembered that particular date from when she had first told him its significance, but he did not own a calendar and the weeks passed unmarked for him.

'My apologies, I should have remembered.'

'You sound as though you really mean that.'

'I do.'

'Most people here are not so sympathetic.' She turned to look over the sea, her pale blue eyes searching for something out there in much the same way Butler's did. 'Fourteen years to the day they found my husband's body on those rocks. Fourteen years I have mourned. I pray to hear his voice one more time, but the Good Lord does not grant me that wish. I must assume that, in His wisdom, He has decreed my husband wait for me in Heaven.' She drew her thin cardigan tighter around the thorns of her elbows. 'How long will I have to wait?' She turned her pale eyes to Butler. 'Do you know that you are the only person in this village who doesn't mock me?'

'Why would I mock you?'

'You know why.' She jerked her head slightly to the village below and its small group of early risen fishermen. 'The same reason they'd mock you, if you didn't scare them all half to death. Life is for the living, that's what they believe. You shouldn't spend your days in mourning.'

'I'm not mourning,' Butler said carefully. 'I am waiting.'

'What's the difference?' She lowered her rickety frame onto the bench beside Butler, an encroachment on their usual mutual distance. 'I waited for them to find my husband, and when they found him I buried him. But I'm still waiting. Waiting to see him again, which is the same as waiting to die.' Her eyes slipped downwards. 'It is a kind of mourning. If not for the person gone, then for what we've given up.'

Butler watched a stray gull throw itself at the waters and then yank back, its beak empty. He had given up a thousand things for Artemis, and that had seemed such a small price when the boy was by his side. But Artemis was gone now.

'What other choice do we have?'

'To move away. I could still go out and live a life. I could forget my husband and remarry. I fear it's too late for me to have children, but I could still enjoy a life of my own.' The heaving grey sky filled her glassy eyes. 'But I won't. Duncade is a dead place. Nobody comes here to live their lives.' Her gaze flicked to the impassive giant sat beside her. 'Why did you come here, Alan?'

'Because I am waiting for someone.'

'You think they'll come wading out of that sea you spend so many hours staring at?'

Below them the black waters crashed together, splintering foam over the cascade of brutal rocks that fell down the hillside. There was nothing beyond. No boats, no lights, just more rocks.

Butler smiled, but there was no joy in it. 'I believe it with all my heart.'

Mrs Canny smiled back. 'And so you wait.'

'And so I wait.'

'What if they never return?'

Neither answered that. They could wait for the rest of their lives, but the yawning black of Duncade's waters would always outlast them, its patience infinite and pounding.

'I'm not waiting to die,' Butler finally said. 'If I have to wait a thousand years on this rock then so be it.'

'You really do believe they're still alive.'

Butler almost smiled. 'I would bet my life on it.'

Mrs Canny's expression was distant. 'You already have.' Then she stood, smoothing her long skirt. 'Well, Alan, I hope whomever you wait for comes back to you, be it in this life or the next.' They had so far made a considerable detour from their usual topics of conversation: the weather, the season, their plans for the day. She steered the topic back to familiar waters. 'What book is it today?'

Butler held the slim green volume aloft. 'The poems of Charlotte Smith.'

'I don't know her.'

'I can lend it to you when I'm finished, if you like.'

'Perhaps.' Her smile was still warm, but both felt the edges of their acquaintanceship strain. Their almost-friendship depended not on intimacy but the mutual respect of one another's isolation. 'I must get to church.'

Butler nodded again. 'Have a good day, Mrs Canny.'

And with a nod in exchange she was off, winding a pebbly way down to the quay and the distant church of St Mary's. Butler's visits to the little church were few. He went sometimes to hear the choristers and sing heartlessly along to the hymns, but there was little comfort to be found for him there. Wherever Artemis was, he couldn't be found in the airy recesses of St Mary's church.

Butler looked out across the sea. The waves split relentlessly against the shore, their roars reaching easily to the top of the outcrop. Artemis was out there somewhere, albeit in another world.

Butler turned back to his book.

I once was happy, when while yet a child,

I learn'd to love these upland solitudes,

And, when elastic as the mountain air,

To my light spirit, care was yet unknown

And evil unforeseen.

The wind tore across the wretched hillside and enwrapped Butler's hands, but he hardly felt it. He read and watched and waited, and waited longer, and waited for days; waited while the waves wore down the shore and the years and his bones, waited with an endless unquenchable faith that he would someday see the boy to whom he had dedicated his life one final time.

Poem extract from 'Beachy Head' by Charlotte Smith.