Arthur woke cleanly, like a swimmer breaking the surface. The wind was deafening. Around and everywhere the sea thrashed, sucking and slapping the granite, sending up whorls of spray. With the shutters closed the air inside was fetid and stifling, deathly cold, stinging the nostrils. His head felt clear, his thoughts transparent. Boxing Day. Bill wasn’t going anywhere. Arthur heard it again. He moved out of bed and went downstairs, down around the sweating inner wall, down into the weather, down into the sea. His wife never understood why he continued to abide the water – but he saw no point in hating the place where their son had gone. For her, the sea had killed Tommy, his body brought back and burned, the ashes kept in a box. Arthur didn’t think a boy should be kept in a box, a five-year-old who in life had never been still for a minute. Instead he was here, in the ocean, where he would wash from north to south, from east to west. He would shimmer in the morning sun and dance circles in the twilight.
