He liked to drive a motorbike on the beach. Spraying along the edge of the water or performing tricks in the dunes for any girl that would watch. The first time I actually got to meet him he was driving a ruler straight line along the most even part of the sand. He came at me so true that I had no idea whose bare legs were stuck out either side of his or whose fingers were gripping and marking his skin inside the open shirt. I’d agreed to meet mother and help her carry some shopping on her way home from town.

"This is Ric," she told me, still sitting on the bike and clutching him as if they were still moving. "He is just a friend," she said as we rushed home. "Though you must not tell your dad. He gets so jealous these days. I might even let Ric teach you to ride." She’d recently started doing a part-time job. Serving in one of the little seaside cafes. We’d heard them rowing about it one night. Then about the way she was dressing up to do it. And going out to spend the money she earned. Suddenly there were sides to everything and you’re thrown from one to the other, powerless to resist or know what is right from wrong: floating in an landlocked sea of their devising and already too far from the shore to find any way back.

Both of us took turns on that bike. The Clown Prince thought Ric was the greatest and that all the explaining and interest was for real. Time after time he nearly gave the game away. Then it did not matter. The rumors had become deafening and our silence impossible to break. We heard him talking to her into the night. I pictured him close to her tired and cultured face, his eyes darting from side to side without any feeling as he listed her shame. If only he had been kinder or more brutal I would never have done what I did. But I was her son then, choking on the same lukewarm mouthfuls.

She had to give up her job and stop going out on her own. They started taking long shopping trips on the weekends. Then we sat together for family meals, gorging on the produce he’d gotten her to buy and cook. And like that morning after the storm I saw there was nothing left for us to find worth having.

At first I just carried small messages of reassurance between them. Then he gave me the letter. I had to promise that nothing would make me look at it on the way to her hand. By the time the sound of his motorbike faded I was stood halfway across the marsh reading every word. I should have crushed it and let it sink into the blackness. Instead I gave it to her. She looked closely at the envelope and then at me, "He is a man without any passion," she said, "your father." then scurried up to their room.

Later that day I had been with the Clown Prince, two of his friends, and a girl - my first girlfriend - in the front room listening to some music. The sound of voices upstairs got a bit louder. Then a scream. Followed by a crashing noise and footsteps running part way down the stairs. Some scuffling: "Give it back," mother yelled: "it is mine." We all froze; and I knew. She was standing, I judged, just above him on the stairs, trapped as he began reading. I tried not to picture him reaching those descriptions of what they had done to each other. Things I still could not believe she or anyone could do - let alone be pleased to recall.

"Out," I said, hurrying everyone through the door. We gathered at the nearby bus shelter.

"What do you think is happening," asked the Clown Prince; not grinning, not joking. The other boys looked as concerned and confused. I tried to act innocent. But the girl, Chrissie, understood precisely. I could see it in her face. It had been my mother who had introduced the two of us. She was some relative of Ric’s and I knew the introduction was contrived for her own reasons and if I let it go any farther it would be another betrayal on my part. But now it did not seem relevant: it was our time. I grabbed her hand and started out toward the dunes; the other boys knew they were not meant to follow.

In the distance I saw someone step down onto the beach. Maybe, I thought , it was Kevin. I kept to the top of the beach, dodging between dunes and the line of sharp concrete and steel war defenses - left behind as a reminder or future precaution. Closer, I could see that it was not a boy. Chrissie, I hoped, and recalled that night and what had started between us. This person was too old. For a moment I imagined that it might be my mother returning. Back, abandoned already, and walking home along the shore. She’d schemed and dreamt us all here in the first place: now, maybe she was powerless to escape. I dropped down and prayed that I had not been seen as Ruby became clear. She was dressed the same as last night and looked, even at this range, as if she had carried on searching without a break.

I tried to blend closer and closer into the concrete with each step she took. There was a frightening anger about her and I knew that I would be one of the last people that she would want to find spying on her. She looked around and then out to sea. I had one of the protruding steel ribs, rusting and cold against my face as she bent and began clawing in the smooth sand. I could just feel that boney finger with its long painted nail slicing its way through and it made my skin feel soft and babyish.

I kept hiding until I was certain that she’d gone, then made my way to the spot to see what lies she had left about us.

There were no words; just a heart. A dumb, school girlish, desktop drawing of one with an arrow going through its center. And falling from it, what I supposed to be, two drops of blood - cut so deeply they were already filling with water: crystal clear and sweet looking, but with as much salt as in the blood they portrayed or any tears spilled over the broken heart above. All of us came from the ocean, we were now told at school, all of us carried its residue, washing through our bodies to remind us of our sea change.

I felt the tide turn, like a gasp at the end of too long a sigh. I stared again at the serpentine track of Ruby’s footsteps: the scuffed, slithering trail of a drunk, I’d decided, and nothing to do with life crawling its way from the depths to anything higher. But then, as I raised my foot to wipe out her work, I could not. I though of her coming all the way to this one spot to leave this mark. A low, white sandbank sure to be reached by the incoming tide and out of sight for any eyes until it was. Her private message to float out of its bottle for the mermaids and whales to add to their songs. A small but pure thing from all this mess that might be taken and not washed back this time.

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