Yes. Yes. So it was a rather silly plan, in retrospect. Irresponsible. I am currently in possession of the Tide Tables for Dungeness, Rye Bay and Hastings (courtesy of our Ms Hahn, no less; part of the cottage’s Welcome Pack). Pett Level doesn’t actually have its own Table (too small, insignificant) – it falls ‘in the approaches’ of Rye Bay and Hastings, but even so, it still doesn’t demand much basic common sense to puzzle the tides out. I didn’t tarry to make this calculation, though, just grabbed my keys and my wallet (no. Not the keys, just the wallet) and blithely set off. It was a silly scheme. It would be fair to say that I sincerely regret it, now. I do. I really do. I regret the leaving, but gracious me! The return! When I finally dragged my way back home (no bus fare! That endless trudge from Hastings over hard road and soggy field!) … On my eventual …

I see it clear as day in my mind’s eye: that lone dustbin perched – somewhat improbably – atop the Look Out (visible from quite some distance off). A warning shot across my bows. An omen. But I just gazed at it, quite innocently, idly pondering the logistics of it all. How on earth did that …? I mean it’s a difficult enough scramble up there without …

I was just way too frazzled to register that this was my bin, that this was my issue …

Perhaps I was actually heading for the New Beach Club (that previous afternoon but one) although the NBC is actually in the opposite direction to Hastings, so possibly not. Or, better still, to The Smuggler (which is en route), for a stiff drink or three. I don’t precisely recall. Although I was dangerously short of cash. Yes. Only had enough for a Schweppes bitter lemon or a Coke. Perhaps I was just …

What was I doing?

Letting off steam?

Getting some much-needed air?

Thinking things through on the hoof?

Walking it out?

All of the above?

I don’t really know why I left (it’s honestly just a blur now – a pointless irrelevance), but then to return to … I mean to come back to the cottage (my base, my home, my … my lair), stagger into the bedroom – exhausted, depleted – and find … Urgh!

The bin was definitely a warning. Then the porch light wouldn’t work. The bulb was missing. Then …

Urgh. Urgh. Urgh!

It now occurs to me that perhaps I hadn’t taken the news of Kimberly’s passing quite so well as I’d initially thought. How I loathe that word: ‘passing’! It smacks of the clairvoyant: the velvet curtain, the spotlight, the odour of a cheap cigar. It’s a verb that tiptoes gingerly around the ineffable absolutes of mortality: the stiffness, the coldness, the imminent putrescence. The ineluctable gone-ness.

‘Passing’. It’s an end without an end – an end without a beginning, even. A cowardly avoidance.