I called at Natasha’s house on my way to Frinton beach. Well, I called at our house – the house where we’d both lived for the past eight years, until two weeks ago.

“Do you want to come to the beach?” I asked on the doorstep, the furthest I was now allowed to go, “Should be a great view.”

Natasha sighed.

“I don’t think so, Henry.”

“You’re not going to watch it?”

“I didn’t say that. I said I wasn’t going to go with you.”

“Okay. Fine.”

I shrugged, turning to leave down the cracked brick steps.

“You know this is the first time in years you’ve invited me out anywhere?” Natasha said suddenly.

“We’ve been places,” I reasoned.

“Not like before. You used to dress up smart. Take me to the cinema, or for dinner. Just because. Then one day you stopped. Like I wasn’t worth the effort anymore.”

“Is that why you want a divorce? Seriously?”

The front door slamming shut was my only answer.

I wandered down to the seafront alone, picking out a spot among the gathering crowd. The late sun painted the sky with streaks of pink and red. It illuminated the waves and the sand and the beach huts, casting all in radiant gold before it dipped below the horizon.

A cold hush fell. Conversation dwindled, until all that could be heard was the drag of waves and the calls of gulls. In the twilight, a dusky light lingered on the faces of those who had gathered. Our eyes adjusted to the darkness like predators. They were fixed in the same direction: upwards.

The wind dropped. The night was balmy, the air close, saturated with the scent of salt. It seemed heavy with a static, electric quality, the way it is before a lightning strike. Sweat beaded on the nape of my neck. There was a great sense of expectation, of a collected held breath.

Then the moon rose. It was a waning gibbous: a moon just beginning to turn its face away from the earth, like a departing guest. Its yellowish lustre was sickly, a pale reflection of the sun’s light. And something else rose with it.

Its official designation was LV-12; a rogue planet that had steadily been marching through the solar system for the better part of a year. It had no star, and it was coming for ours. It was just a pity that the earth was in the way.

It loomed over us, waxen and monstrous. Larger than it had ever been, closer than it had ever come. It moved so slowly it was hard to tell it moved at all. But in the far reaches beyond our atmosphere, it was flying. Flying without wind resistance to slow it, without a course to guide it, without a pilot to save it.

The impact was silent. Hundreds of miles from earth, in the vacuum of space, it made no sound that could reach us. Only those with the keenest eyes recognised it. A cry went up, quiet, disbelieving. For a few, bewildered seconds, the rest of us strained to see what they saw. Then the first explosion tore through the moon, and our voices joined theirs.

It was like the night was eating the moon. Pieces broke off like shards of glass, jagged edges cutting the fabric of the sky. They burned white-hot, molten as forged iron, spinning out into space where they were swallowed up by darkness.

For hours, we watched. The moon, guttering like a candle, dwindled from a pound coin to a penny, to a speck the size of a star. And then, little by little, it evanesced into nothing before the first glimmer of dawn.

Seabirds took flight as the sun rose, squabbling and squawking as though nothing had changed. The sea was calm, waves sighing as rosy morning light danced across its surface. I watched as the tide fell. It would never rise so high again.

As I slowly walked along the beach, towards home, I realised that no child born from that day on would ever see the moon. To them, it would never be missing from the night sky. They would never remember the festivals celebrated around its waxing and waning. Within a few generations, no one would. How quickly the impossible becomes the mundane.

And then I saw her. Natasha. Wrapped in a trenchcoat, her hair flyaway, as though she’d been out all night. How quickly would Natasha forget me? A few months, a few years? How many times would the earth turn before the home we once shared no longer felt half-empty without me?

She smiled ruefully as I drew nearer.

“You saw it, then,” I said, pointlessly.

“I did,” Natasha said.

“Will you miss it? The moon?”

“I’m not sure if there’s much to miss.”

“What?”

“Well, look.”

Natasha pointed out to the horizon. There, barely visible in the dawn light, a rugged shape hung low over the water.

“But it was destroyed?” I breathed, “We all saw it.”

“We saw the moon destroyed, yes. But that’s not the moon. Or at least, it wasn’t.”

Slowly, I came to the same realisation that Natasha had: LV-12 had obliterated the moon, but not itself – not quite. After the explosion, a piece of the planet was left intact. A piece roughly the size and shape of our moon. LV-12 had replaced what it had taken from us.

“Natasha,” I said, “Do you think –”

“You can’t come back,” she said quickly.

“Do you think,” I said, undeterred, “I could take you out sometime?”

Natasha frowned.

“Take me out?”

“On a date. To the movies, or a restaurant. Wherever you like.”

“Henry…” Natasha sighed, “Why are you asking me this?”

I looked up at the embers of LV-12, beaten and hammered into shape by distant and powerful forces. Ancient matter made new. In the east, the sun was rising.

“Because,” I said, “It seems like a good day to start again.”