I was relieved when she turned at the bottom of the steps and walked along the stones parallel with the shoreline, rather than heading straight for the water – I was far too stuffed to contemplate the idea of a swim. On a clear evening like this, it wasn’t unknown for her to insist on us taking a dip. The water would be acceptably warm after a day of lapping at hot shingle, and Aunty Kaye reckoned it was good for the digestion as well as the soul. Whether she’d gleaned that information from her twenty-year medical career, or simply made it up, I never knew. She did also claim that a full stomach made you float better so we’d be less likely to drown, which didn’t have the ring of anatomical fact about it.

The muffled thump of a live drum kit grew louder as we approached our destination. We veered off the stones on to the hardstanding beyond and I followed Aunty Kaye through an archway into a low-ceilinged bar called Blues on the Beach.

‘He’s twenty-one,’ Aunty Kaye told the guy on the door before he could say anything.

He looked me up and down and smiled at her. ‘Just get inside, Kaye,’ he said. ‘And don’t cause me no trouble.’ He shook his head at me as I walked past. ‘I know she likes a younger man, but this is taking the piss.’

The four-piece band inside was playing some fifties and sixties Chicago blues – Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf – the stuff I loved. The singer had to be one of the prettiest girls I’d ever seen – all eye-flicks and beehive hair – and, at no more than five foot, her chin almost rested on the upright bass on which she laid down a groove as she sang. I made light work of a JD and Coke as I watched the band’s every move and felt those bending notes of the blues run deep into my spine. While the harmonica player blasted out a solo, the singer found my transfixed eyes in her audience and she blew me a kiss. High on the booze and the best music ever made, I dared to blow one back. It was a place that reminded me what it really meant to be cool, before the word got hijacked by people who thought it was about standing around, looking moody.

The band finished their set and I joined Aunty Kaye at the bar. She was deep in debate with the server, a girl little older than me with undercut hair and a leopard-print sleeve tattoo, introduced to me as Adrienne.

‘Nice to put a face to a name,’ she told me. ‘Kaye never stops talking about you.’ She checked behind her for the presence of management, before free-pouring another shot of whisky into my glass.