With the terrifying ordeal of Ma Tunstall’s driving having already pushed his nerves off a cliff, Michael stepped down from the cab of the Land Rover ready to spit a mouthful of solid Anglo-Saxon expletives. He could tell Toby Tunstall could see what was coming. His small, bright eyes flashed from Michael to Ma to the cracked concrete at his feet, and he reflexively reached for the bandana in his back pocket. Michael didn’t need to be a mechanic to know his car was in a bad way, maybe enough for the insurance to write it off completely. He’d get a new car, so no big deal, right? But he’d only had the thing for a little over a year, back when everything was coasting along perfectly. All he wanted to do was sell the beach house and all the land and get as far away from Hernshore as he could, as soon as he could. His car being out of action was going to be a major obstacle to that happening.

  Michael slammed the Land Rover’s door, took a breath to make sure his tirade would be properly fuelled, and never got a word out.

  The other mechanic with Toby, on seeing Michael, theatrically flicked his roll-up aside. Michael knew that mannerism. A memory flared, like the dragon’s eye cinder at the end of the man’s tumbling cigarette, bright and orange and gone in an instant. A smile, broad and true, grew across the mechanic’s gaunt and stubbled features until it creased his eyes and bared his gap-tooth grin. The teeth used to be whiter, not stained with tobacco. But Michael still knew that smile. Memories were like habits, not recalled in pictures, but organised like patterns of feelings tied to situations and people: people like Nathan, or rather Nat Wanban. In his dirty coveralls, Nat bounded the few yards between them, calling Michael’s name and wrapping his arms around him in a tight hug. The very instant Nat did, slapping Michael’s back hard twice, Michael knew him, and a whole rack of other memories unfurled from nowhere. They were a deck of cards plucked from behind my ear and fanned out. Pick a card, any card. A Joker, because that’s who Nat Wanban was, and poof! Michael remembered Nat had been with him and Toby and Fin the day the bees attacked. Why hadn’t he remembered this before, when he was helping Ma bury poor Fin? Why were there so many missing cards in the deck?

  It had been Nat’s idea to pee on the beehive – another detail Michael had forgotten. Because why kick a beehive when you could piss on it? Way funnier, that was Nat’s reasoning. It was a miracle none of them got stung on their little pricks. But one thing was true: while it wasn’t funny at the time, running through the fields trying to stuff their tiddlers back in their trousers while being stung, it certainly made Michael smile involuntarily as an adult. For the moment, his anger abated.

  ‘Car’s banjaxed, mate. Probably better writing it off.’ Nat was grinning ear to ear, as though Toby running Michael off the road was merely an extension of their childhood hijinks.

  Michael was smiling and feeling the warm glow of friendship, but he shook it off along with Nat’s grubby hands on his shoulders. ‘But can you fix it?’

  Nat’s own smile faltered. He looked to Toby, who wasn’t smiling. He’d already met the new Mikey Lorimer. Nat eyed Michael with a mix of fading amusement and growing weariness. ‘For sure. No problem, Chief.’ That word used to irk Michael as a kid too. ‘Cost an arm and leg, mind—’

  Michael cut in. ‘I won’t be paying.’

  Nat raised both his eyebrows. Whether he was thinking Michael was a tight assed, miserly rich guy, or a straightforward dickhead, Michael couldn’t tell. He didn’t much appreciate either reading.

  ‘It was my fault. I’ll cover it,’ Toby said, more than a little sullenly.

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ Ma tutted. Sam was standing next to her, hands stuffed in the kangaroo pocket on the front of his hoodie, shoulders hunched up to his ears. ‘You boys sort this out.’ She flapped her hand at them, as if what they were discussing was inconsequential. ‘Is Tink here?’

  Toby blinked at the unexpected change of subject, but before he could answer a voice came from the open garage behind Michael’s car. A girl, short and with straw-coloured hair, about the same age as Sam, appeared from the shadows inside.

  ‘Unfortunately for me,’ said the girl, emerging into the daylight.

  With the same small nose as Toby and Ma, but not quite as piggish, more of a button affecting a slight upturn, she was pretty. Unlike Toby, she was petite and couldn’t have been much over five feet. A few pimples stood out on her pale cheeks. She wore a pair of black canvas high-tops, cut-off denim shorts, and a white vest, both too tight and too small. Maybe Michael was getting old, or maybe having a son sent his mind to places which he had not had to consider since his own teenage years, involving teenage pregnancy and STIs. He didn’t know. The whole day had been a slick bar of soap constantly slipping from his grip. But he did know that no sooner than Sam had seen her, his eyes fixed even more firmly on the ground; his brown skin couldn’t hide his blush.

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  ‘Nuff o’ that, Tink,’ Ma scolded. ‘This is Sam, Lord Lorimer’s son. They’re back in town—’

  ‘We’re not staying,’ Michael felt compelled to add.

  ‘Don’t think you’ll be going anywhere,’ Nat said.

  Ma ignored us. ‘Take Sam to grab something to eat from the shop. He’s starving.’ Ma gave Sam a friendly little push forward.

  Tink walked past the men, tutting, her lazy, effortless stride swaying her hips. ‘I’m skint?’

  ‘Michael.’ Ma cocked her head. It took him a second to catch on.

  ‘Oh, right.’ He fished his card-wallet from his pocket and peeled a twenty from the money clip at the back. ‘Here you go,’ he said, offering it to Sam. Sam plucked it from Michael’s hand without making eye contact and fell in behind Tink who was sauntering back up the cobbled alley. Michael watched them go, thinking he needed to do better at taking care of the boy’s basic needs. He’d probably need to start off with finding out what the hell they were. That thought prompted Michael to shout after them. ‘Be back here in an hour.’ It was Tink who waved a hand without looking back, which Michael took as an acknowledgement.

  Ma added, ‘And keep clear the dunes, you hear?’

  Tink gave less of a wave and more of a wafting away of something annoying, namely all the old folks. Michael had never thought of himself as old, but he suppose he was from a teenager’s perspective. He would have thought so when he was their age.

  Nat was watching Michael watching them go. ‘Mikey, you old dog. Last time I saw you, you swore you’d never have kids. What is he, fourteen, fifteen?’

  ‘Sixteen,’ I said, coming back to the problem at hand. ‘How long to fix the Merc?’

  ‘Sixteen?’ Nat’s mischievous smile twitched nervously, and he checked Ma and Toby for confirmation. Toby shrugged and wiped his lips on the bandana.

  ‘Aye, he’s sixteen,’ Ma confirmed.

  They were getting at something, but Michael was not grasping what it was, and as a result was becoming royally pissed off. It seemed utterly irrelevant considering he was here for the single reason of getting his car fixed.

  ‘Yes, he’s sixteen, alright. Now, the car; when can we get out of here?’

  He saw the look between the three of them and chose to assume it was bad news about the car, which was patently obvious. Ma gave Nat a nod and he blew out his cheeks, scratching his head.

  ‘Like I said, Mikey, it’s a write off from an insurance point of view. But if it’s what you want, I could get you back on the road in four...’ He rocked his head side-to-side, ‘maybe five days.’

  ‘Four days!’

  ‘Maybe five.’

  ‘Are you taking the piss?’

  ‘Got to order the parts in. CLS is a luxury car. Not a lot of those around here. Can’t go to the junk yard and hope to cannibalise a wreck for you. Your front axel’s shot, so’s the suspension. There’s a crack in the radiator. You need a new front bumper; that’s the simplest thing and I don’t have one. Got to order it all in. It’s mid-afternoon already. Could take two or three days for the parts to get here, then it’s at least a couple of days’ work, assuming I ditch all my other customers for you, Mikey. If that’s taking the piss, then yeah consider it taken.’

  Michael stared at Nat, grinding his teeth on that bitter, gritty pill. Finally, his shoulders sagged. ‘Fine, fine. What about a hire car?’

  ‘Same problem, mate. Nothing ‘round here. You remember how it is? We’re pretty self-sufficient. Not much call for hire cars or insurance. Deliveries get here eventually, but they are hardly reliable. We’ve always been our own little bubble. You remember?’

  Michael didn’t remember, but Ma came up beside him. ‘There are more important things, Mikey. Like that fine boy of yours.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he agreed, but really, he was trying to work out what his next move was. ‘Have you got a landline I could borrow?’

  ‘Sure, in the back on the wall. Same place dad and grandad always had it. Going to phone your insurance?’

  Another of those magic card memories turned over. He did know where the phone was. A cream analogue phone like the one back in the beach house, only it was smudged with engine oil and hung on the wall above a pitted wood countertop, with a stack of boxed parts beneath, and all of it bathed in the metallic-earthy scent of engine grease and petroleum fumes. ‘No, just fix the car,’ Michael said walking into the garage lock-up.

  The phone was exactly where the old memory—newly found—expected it to be. Nush’s and Bateman and Primrose’s numbers were in his own phone, which without a signal had been reduced to a Rolodex with a camera. He started with the latter number. Although they were trapped in Hernshore for the time being, the property deal had to go through. But Michael was also getting worried about Nush. Was she already waiting at the beach house for him? And if not, where the hell was she?