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Mum. Not just the grey hair and the glasses. Her clothes, perhaps. And her hands, and the way she speaks.
    Alex comes downstairs. He watches everyone from the kitchen doorway. His eyes twinkle at me, as if he’s pleased I’m there too, but he doesn’t say much. Finn pours tea for everyone from a big brown pot. A marmalade cat sidles in and winds in and out of everyone’s legs under the table before jumping up and settling itself on Joy’s lap. Piers wanders off and a few minutes later the house is full of the sound of piano music: loud chords and impossibly intricate notes.
    ‘What are you going to cook on the barbecue?’ Joy asks.
    ‘Sausages, veggy kebabs, mackerel if Finn can catch some!’ Thea says.
    Finn looks at me. ‘Want to come and catch fish?’
     
    I’ve never been fishing before so I just watch. It’s cold, mind. I wrap myself up in the old blanket we brought from the house to sit on. You’re not supposed to make a noise when you fish, apparently, so we don’t talk. Every so often I forget, and ask Finn a question, and he answers very quietly. He’s too polite to tell me to shut up.
    ‘Do Alex and Joy live here all year round?’ I ask.
    ‘Only since last year, when they both retired. They bought the Manse for our holidays originally, way back when houses were cheap as chips.’
    ‘So do you come here every holiday?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Don’t you get bored? Wouldn’t you like to see other places?’
    Finn stares at me as if I’m crazy. ‘No. I’m never bored. I’d live here all the time if I had my way. I can’t wait to leave school and then I can.’
    ‘Where’s your school?’
    ‘London.’
    ‘That’s a very long way away!’
    He takes a coloured spinner from the open box by his side and fixes it to the line.
    ‘I go to an ordinary comprehensive school,’ I tell him, even though he hasn’t asked. ‘What’s it like, boarding?’
    ‘Rubbish. A total nightmare, if you really want to know.’
    I stop asking questions for a while.
    I study his face in profile: serious, thin, fine-boned. His eyes are grey-blue and his hair dark, curling at the back along his neck. Pale skin. He seems perfectly at home, perched on the rocks, almost camouflaged in his big baggy jumper: hand-knitted flecked blue wool. He casts the line, and skilfully makes the spinner dance and zigzag like a tiny fish darting through the water.
    ‘We should have come down earlier,’ he says. ‘It’s best at high tide, catching mackerel off the rocks. This state of an ebb tide you need a boat really. We could go and get the boat I suppose . . .’
    I remember what Mum said about the house parties and boats. It looked fun , she said.
    ‘I’ll take you out in it sometime, if you like,’ he says. ‘It’s just a wooden rowing boat, nothing grand.’
    ‘Is it dangerous,’ I say, ‘with all the rocks and the currents and tides and all that?’
    ‘Not if you know what you are doing,’ Finn says. ‘I’ve been coming here since I was a small child. We could go to one of the uninhabited islands, to get cockles. We do that every summer.’
    I’m not exactly sure what cockles are. Shellfish, I guess, like in that old song: ‘ cockles and mussels, alive, alive-o ’. But I’m not going to show myself up by asking.
    Finn suddenly springs into action – leaping up, winding in the line on the rod, flicking a thrashing, shiny fish on the stone. He unhooks it and hits it on the rock to kill it. It lies there, silver with beautiful markings along its back. He does this six times, until he has six gleaming mackerel of the right size to barbecue. Each time, it makes my eyes smart to watch the fish die. ‘The fish hardly suffer,’ Finn says when he sees me flinch. ‘They have a good life. It’s better than factory farming.’
    I hear voices. Piers and Thea are making their way down towards us with baskets and bags of stuff. Thea waves. ‘Caught anything?’ she calls.
    ‘Six fish!’ I call back.
    ‘Excellent.’