I have it all. I’m not wealthy but well-off. I have a wife, a child — a son, four months old — a house, a car. I live by the sea. In summer, the fledgling seagulls perching on the roofs wake us up. The town is built around a semi-disused harbour. When the tide runs out, the harbour falls dry. The little fishing boats tip to one side like listing ships on a heavy swell. They lie there, sleeping on one ear, until the sea picks them up again, and they can be their bobbing selves again, greeting the crowds on the quay. There are always tourists taking pictures. It’s not a particularly scenic sight, but then I can’t be sure what’s being captured. Maybe there’s a memory ensconced somewhere, there among the coiled-up hawsers.

I sit in my garden on a sunny day and can smell the silting sea. I have a can of beer in my hand. I try to read a book. My wife is tending her vegetable patch, her skin glistening. She is wearing shorts and an old camisole, worn from countless washing cycles, no bra. Her breasts are heavy. She is breastfeeding our son. She is completely absorbed in her task, which is to plant the rosemary and mint we’ve just picked up from the garden centre. There is something endearing and slightly pathetic about her absorption, but mostly it is beautiful. She is in a state of flow. This is the meaning of that hackneyed phrase. It means doing something without thinking about something else. It is the opposite of what I’m doing.

When I told my colleagues I was moving out of London to the coast, they each said, to a fault, that the sea air is healthy. Here I am in my plastic garden chair, with my beer, watching beads of sweat form on my wife’s forehead, watching them fall to the dark soil, wondering what fruit they will sprout. My wife has unwittingly taught me the meaning of the word “voluptuous”. Hey, I say, interrupting her flow. You know you’re a MILF now, don’t you?

My colleagues were right. Health is carried in on the sea breeze like tiny spores. All you have to do is breathe it in. The white cliffs are stronger than the strongest crystals. They bestow the gift of health on all who come within two miles of their bounty.

But at the back of this garden is a shed, and in the shed is nothing. And if I open the door, which I won’t, it would overwhelm this place — this house, this job, this car, this family — with nothing. A dim glow that sucks the light out of things. I keep it there, locked away. Sometimes I wonder how much nothing it will hold. But maybe it’s endless.

I crack open another beer. The rosemary is just about to go in. The air is pregnant with life-giving health. I am happy.