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I didn't want to just be a witness. I wanted to be a consultant, an intrinsic part of what lay ahead. Being around Helen and Seamus was not enough. I had to dig for the bad tissue in me that connected us all. I felt my stomach tightening with need: I deserved to be an ingredient; more so than Seamus. The links between myself and Helen ran deeper than those he laid claim to.
        Or so I hoped. I turned on to the pier, the Midland Hotel pale and scabrous at my back, and marched into the teeth of the wind towards the lighthouse. At the pier's end it stood, by a cafe and a building where mussels and the like were cleaned and sorted. It was a short, unimpressive affair, with a static light. It did its job though; you could see the white tip clearly from all points on the promenade at night. The pier itself was deserted; not so the first time I'd been here, early October some years ago. There'd been men night-fishing, their rods tipped with luminous yellow bite indicators which hung in mid-air like fire flies. And cars, their doors open, music and the low muttering of men waiting for something to happen. Alone, it would have been a menacing sight but we were buoyed by bottles of red wine drunk on the armoury of rocks that reached into the sea. Ten days I'd known these people back then: Helen, Seamus and who else? I remember a girl and a couple of blokes whose names escape me. We clattered on to the pier under a sky readying itself for winter. That night was not so cold but we wore heavy coats anyway, as though living by the sea tugged at an innate rule that said we ought to. Helen wore a hat. There'd been some kind of electricity that drew us together in the first week: I was excited to discover we were both reading the same book-that had to count for something. After a day or two, when we went in a group to The Three Mariners, we drifted out in front, holding hands or linking each other as if it were the most natural act in the world. It seemed a pre-ordained matter that we should sleep together.
        On the pier. We stood in a semi-circle trying to snatch our breath back from the suck of air above the sea. Helen unscrewed her jar of lip balm and smeared a little over her lips. Want some? she'd asked me, stepping up close before I had chance to answer and planting a kiss that tasted of pineapples on my mouth. It was an exciting kiss, perhaps because it was so sticky, because it stands as a signpost in my memory for what was to ensue. I think too it was remarkable because I'd never before kissed a woman who was the same height as me. Not having to lean down, feeling our lips meet vertically-I could look directly into the dark gleam of her eyes-made for a thrilling moment. We flapped and fussed in the wind for a while and I broke away from the group, sidling down the cafe verandah to a section of fencing beyond which lay pallets emptied of shellfish and a large, oily black tractor which smelled of burned diesel. I was hoping she'd follow me. I heard her heavy boots clomping my way, her hand thrust into the crook of my arm; I could smell the dizzy warmth of her perfume. Her hair brushed against my cheek.
         What shall we do now?
        
***
        
        I stood at the end of the pier, looking into the grey-green swell of dead water. A boy on a mountain bike skidded to a stop by the railing, spat twice over the edge then pedalled away, shouting at a dog whose lead dragged behind it on the floor as it ran to keep up.
        The current roiled under the water, pulling its surface tight like a piece of clingfilm before eddies of foam split it apart again. For a lunatic beat I saw myself leaping to become a part of its mystery: it seemed desperately vital that I consign myself in some way to the lighthouse and what it stood for. Ghosts clung to me, keen as sea spray.
        I could see The Whistling Clam from here, one of those homogeneous fun pubs on the front which boast all the enticement of a dogshit flan. I