A breeze bristled the hairs on Michael’s forearms, exposed under rolled up sleeves. It was the first reprieve from the day’s warmth, so it wasn’t unwelcome. In concert with the wind, a cloud crossed the sun. Like fingerprints on glass, it seemed to dull the glamorous lustre of Michael’s return home. It was the same day and the same place, only now seen through a subtly different filter. The colours were a touch more muted, the glare of reality less startling. The crowd of people remained themselves. Their laughter kept its warmth and effervescence, but Michael could see the outline of them better as they stood or sat on the grass nursing drinks.

  So far, he had been asked to bless a new marriage, supply a courting couple advice, and to give his opinion on buying new books by Ethel Hislop the librarian. She wanted more police procedurals, but thought they might be too dark and depressing, which led to a general volleying of ideas about books villagers liked, with good-humoured teasing and faux outrage at their friends’ tastes.

  Another child came to sit on Michael’s knee. His name was John, and he was blind in one eye and wore a patch like a miniature pirate. For a second, Michael thought his parents were either going to ask for the Lord of the Manor to heal the blind or smash a bottle of dandelion and burdock over the prow of the little guy’s first galleon. As it turned out, the boy merely wanted to meet Michael and ask him questions.

  ‘What’s your favourite colour?’

  ‘Erm, red.’

  ‘Are you married?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you got a fast car?’

  ‘Pretty fast. It has a computer too.’

  ‘What’s a computer?’

  ‘It’s... well...’ Michael looked to Nat for help. Never a good idea. He shrugged as if to say, Buggered if I know. ‘Er...’ Michael stumbled on, ‘it’s like a teacher; it tells me things.’

  ‘Like the future?’

  ‘No, more like where I'm going.’

  ‘If you don’t know where you’re going, how do you get there?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s why I ask the computer.’

  Everyone chuckled. Little John frowned, running out of questions, but a final one lifted his eyebrows and nudged back his hairline.

  ‘Have you got any children?’

  Reflexively, Michael was about to say no but caught himself. ‘Yes,’ he answered tentatively.

  There was a change. Glances were exchanged. Smiles weakened but held. Whispered conversations muted. Michael sensed Nat, usually so relaxed and ready with a joke, stiffen and take a swig of his pint.

  ‘Is he my age?’ little John asked sounding hopeful.

  Michael shook his head. ‘He’s a bit bigger.’

  ‘How much bigger?’

  ‘About this much.’ Michael held his hand way above the boy’s head. The crowd laughed, and yet they were unsure, but Michael remained buoyed by the closeness he’d fallen back into, that sense of communal familiarity, the groove of it, like the heirloom watch on his wrist. This was the feeling of being home. How could a thing be so light and so heavy at the same time? Another magic trick?

  ‘No, silly. How much older is he?’

  ‘I don’t know. That would depend on how old you are.’

  ‘I’m six.’

  ‘Six!’ Michael blew out his cheeks. ‘That is big. But he’s another ten years older than you.’

  The difficulty of the sum crinkled little John’s cherubic face. Michael didn’t want to look away from it. It was innocent and uncomplicated, but all around and all at once the rest of this tiny, impossible to find corner of the world was changing. The sky darkened further, and thunder rumbled from the direction of the sea. Toby’s huge bulk suddenly loomed above the picnic table, a mirror of the gathering storm clouds. No one was laughing anymore.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  ‘Wassup, Tobes?’ Nat said. The jibe was delivered without feeling and died on air that tasted metallic with ionisation.

  ‘We need to find the kids,’ Toby said, unceremoniously dumping their three pints on the picnic table.

  Michael let little John off his knee and the boy ran back to his parents, throwing his arms around the leg of his father. Another man, one Michael didn’t recognise, with a round belly and a moustache, waddled into the beer garden from the back of the pub carrying a pint, a look on his face that was frankly unnerving. Michael had seen it before, during his time a couple of years out of university when he played poker professionally—partly to raise the capital to start his property business, and partly because it was easy money. The cards always ran his way, and now he thought about that, there was something wrong in that, as wrong as that man’s look.

  Most professional players were calculating, they played the statistics. Some of the best nights were in casinos, cleaning out people with no facility with numbers or luck. But there was one kind of player that was a dangerous combination: they calculated on chaos, they leaned into it, provoking it with wild bets. Michael called it the “fuck it!” look, and this man had it.

  The cards of life were going to turn in quick succession. He could sense it, a royal flush palmed out of thin air and slammed on the table, cleaning him out.

  ‘Your boy’s sixteen?’ the librarian Ethel Hislop asked in a voice tight, the kind she might reserve for patrons with late returns or teenagers sniggering over a copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

  ‘That’s right. His name is Sam.’ Michael had the urge to spill all and explain. Why did he feel these people deserved that? He hardly knew them. Several hours ago, in his life in London, he probably would have told them to mind their own business, accented with a bit of Anglo-Saxon.

  ‘That can’t be,’ someone said.

  The wind picked up, ruffling hair, and thunder rolled in the distance. A few of the villagers drew sharp breaths. A handful more, some couples and a family with baby in a pram, peeled away and hurried from the beer garden, passing Ma Tunstall, laden with a shopping bag in each hand, coming the other direction and heading straight for Michael and his friends.

  ‘But we didn’t have time to get ready,’ another villager said.

  Ready for what? Michael thought. What’s going on? What did I say?

  ‘Oh bugger!’ Nat muttered under his breath.

  ‘Tink and Sam were seen near the dunes,’ Toby said.

  An icy nail drew a frigid trail between Michael’s shoulder blades. But why? It was the same reason he almost said, ‘Don’t go into the dunes,’ to Sam when they arrived at the beach house, and why Ma had rushed them down from Tunstall farm and stormed up the weather worn railway sleepers and yanked Sam into a motherly embrace. Not simply overfamiliar yokel ways, not a tradition or saying or superstition. Something else?

  Don’t go into the dunes, not if you a Lorimer be...

  Where did that come from? Like that line from a song that had fallen from his lips outside the telephone box. At Tunstall farm; Sow and reap and fill the barn. Was it part of the same song? He couldn’t remember, but thought it was. The rest of it was out of reach.

  Ma was nearly with them. She passed the man with the “fuck it” look, leaning into the coming storm. He said something to her. She either didn’t hear or ignored him. The way she readjusted her grip made Michael think it was the latter. What’s wrong? What was he missing? What is it that was out of reach?

  The memory came back, the one from a summer long ago when Michael was sixteen.

  He is kneeling in the wash of waves crashing gently on the beach. Sand coats his hands and clogs his wet hair and peppers his soaking t-shirt. He shivers but doesn’t care because he is crying. Inconsolable. Behind him, above the tide line, lies his father, amid the porcupines of marram grass and soft sand of the last dune. The memory is correct, he is sure of it, but now Michael doubts its meaning. What comes after it is as clear and clean as a punch to the solar plexus when you're not ready. How he dragged his father’s body back through the dunes, exhausted and at the point of collapse. There, waiting, were his mother, Toby, and Toby’s late father, Amos, and Ma Tunstall at the top of the garden. The funeral followed, with the whole town in attendance. Then they moved to their muse in London and never came back, until...

  ‘Didn’t you hear me?’ Toby was getting annoyed. Ma came up on his shoulder and put down her shopping bags.

  ‘Where are the kids?’ She was red-faced and breathing hard from her march. She looked between the three men the same as when they were boys who’d run in, stung head to toe from urinating on a beehive.

  Nat put his hands up in surrender. ‘Haven’t seen them since you sent them off.’

  ‘Constable Cribb saw them making footsie at the playground,’ the fat moustachioed man said, loud enough for everyone can hear.

  A murmur spread among Ethel, the librarian, little John’s parents, and the other remaining townsfolk, after which the sky joined in with its own thunderous grumble.

  ‘Wait,’ little John’s mother said, ‘are you saying you brought your sixteen-year-old boy back here, and you’ve been here less than a day and you’ve let him wander off to the dunes without you?’

  The woman was horrified, as if Michael was the worst father in the world, the kind that would leave a baby in a car on a hot day or let their toddler juggle chainsaws.

  Michael’s frustration was a tangle of knots that only seemed to be pulling tighter. ‘Wait a second...’ he said. Thunder rolled and the first of drops of rain spat down. ‘I don’t see what the problem is. They are teenagers hanging out. That’s all. We were all young once.’

  The Fuck It man didn’t laugh, he guffawed, his big belly jiggling.

  Consternation rippled through the beer garden. Some, seeing the drops of rain, cried out. Michael, in search of an explanation, looked down at his shirt, he could see the raindrops weren’t raindrops at all. They left light brown flecks. Dabbing a finger at one, he rubbed his thumb across it. Sand? It was flecks of sand, not rain.

  Little John’s parents scooped up their son. The Fuck It man took a seat at a nearby bench, not seeming to mind the sharp, dry rain flicking down. He even raised his pint in a toast to Michael when he caught his eye. Toby had had enough and slammed a fist on the table.

  ‘Now! You might not care about this town, but my daughter is out there with your son.’

  ‘Toby,’ Ma warned.

  ‘What is this?’ Michael stood up. As he did, he looked to Nat for a sarcastic quip, but Nat wasn’t in a joking mood anymore. Instead, he sighed in resignation and got up too.

  ‘Come on, you must remember something,’ Toby said. He wasn’t shouting yet, not quite. ‘All that money and luck and running away can’t have made you blind. Didn’t you notice things going wrong in the last year?’

  ‘Toby, don’t,’ Ma hissed, ‘this isn’t the right time.’

  Toby shrugged off her touch. ‘Right time? Right time?’ He was incredulous, gesticulating at the darkening sky with the kerchief in his fist. ‘My Tink is away with his boy and the storm is coming.’

  Michael’s temper frayed. ‘Is this about your racism again? He can’t help the colour of his skin, you bigot.’

  Nat was looking around as the beer garden cleared of all but them and the Fuck It man, who was enjoying the show, grinning and sipping his pint.

  ‘What are you talking about, you self-important prick?’ Toby shouted.

  ‘Don’t try to deny it. You had an issue with him the moment you saw him.’

  Toby was baffled. The accusation was a stiff jab he didn’t see coming and needed to shake off. He let out a baleful laugh. ‘You dozy twat!’ He laughed again, coming unhinged. ‘Who gives a toss about what he looks like?’ Another laugh, deep and mocking.

  ‘Then what is it, Toby? What’s your problem?’

  Toby stopped laughing and looking Michael hard in the eye, the wind tugging at their hair. ‘You’re my problem. You have always been my problem, and Ma’s, and the whole Tunstall clan. Getting you ready for it. Hoping you’re coming back. Hoping you remember in time and get your shit together, so you don’t screw it up for everyone.’

  Of all people, Nat cut in, arms wide, calming. ‘Tobes, mate, this isn’t helping.’

  ‘What, no jokes? Not funny anymore, is it?’ Toby clenched his jaw and looked to the coast, shaking his head at what he found. ‘I’ve had enough of this. I’m going to look for my daughter. And I swear by Herne...’ Toby pointed at Michael, the red kerchief dangling from his fist like a blood clot, ‘...if she’s in the dunes with your boy, I’m going to kill you.’