Dina stuck a finger in her wine and swirled it. “Fuck’s sake. What a totally shitty thing to do.”

“The developers didn’t know things were going to turn out like this.”

“I bet they did, too, or anyway they didn’t care, but that’s not what I meant. I meant what a shitty thing to do, getting people to move out to Broken Harbor. I’d rather live in a landfill.”

I said, “I’ve got a lot of good memories of Broken Harbor.”

She sucked her finger clean with a pop. “You just think that because you always have to think everything’s lovely. Ladies and gentlemen, my brother Pollyanna.”

I said, “I’ve never seen what’s so bad about focusing on the positive. Maybe it’s not cool enough for you—”

“What positive? It was OK for you and Geri, you got to go hang out with your friends; I was stuck sitting there with Mum and Dad, getting sand up my crack, pretending I was having fun paddling in water that practically gave me frostbite.”

“Well,” I said, very carefully. “You were only five, the last time we went there. How well do you remember it?”

A flash of blue stare, under the fringe. “Enough that I know it sucked. That place was creepy. Those hills, I always felt like they were staring at me, like something crawling on my neck, I kept wanting to—” She smacked the back of her neck, a vicious reflexive slap that made me flinch. “And the noise, Jesus Christ. The sea, the wind, the gulls, all these weird noises that you could never figure out what they were … I had nightmares practically every night that some sea monster thing stuck its tentacles in the caravan window and started strangling me. I bet you anything someone died building that shitty estate, like the Titanic.”

“I thought you liked Broken Harbor. You always seemed like you were having a good time.”

“No I didn’t. You just want to think that.” For a second, the twist to Dina’s mouth made her look almost ugly. “The only good thing was that Mum was so happy there. And look how that turned out.”

There was a moment of silence that could have sliced skin. I almost dropped the whole thing, went back to drinking my wine and telling her how delicious it was—maybe I should have, I don’t know—but I couldn’t. I said, “You make it sound like you were already having problems.”

“Like I was already crazy. That’s what you mean.”

“If that’s how you want to put it. Back when we were going to Broken Harbor, you were a happy, stable kid. Maybe you weren’t having the holiday of a lifetime, but overall, you were fine.”

I needed to hear her say it. She said, “I was never fine. This one time I was digging a hole in the sand, little bucket and spade and everything all adorable, and at the bottom of the hole there was a face. Like a man’s face, all squashed up and making faces, like he was trying to get the sand out of his eyes and his mouth. I screamed and Mum came, but by then he was gone. And it wasn’t just at Broken Harbor, either. Once I was in my room and—”