Oh, to be a teenager again . . . it feels so long ago. Like being a different person. Makes me think about Ben. You know, I’ve been seeing a lot of him. No, I don’t mean like that. He’s working on the house and we’ve really got to know each other. Funny how you can get someone so wrong. He’s nothing like he used to be. But then are any of us the same as when we were young?

Being here reminds me of that time we went to the seaside, and you got a rubber dinghy and I was so scared you were going to float away. Remember how you tied a piece of string to the dinghy, and I stood on the shoreline and held the other end to make sure you were safe and didn’t disappear. Sometimes I still feel like I’m standing on that beach, holding that piece of string.

You know I’ll never let go, don’t you?

x

‘See You Later, Alligator’

Sitting on my beach towel, I finish writing my postcard, then take out my phone and take a photograph of the front and back and email it. A very twenty-first-century postcard. This way, it’ll get there much quicker; plus you don’t need a stamp.

Or an address.

Taking a deep lungful of salty air, I straighten up and look out across the waves, watching their frothy peaks rolling lazily in and out; the way the light is catching on the water, making it glitter, as it stretches out to meet the horizon. It’s a perfect summer’s day. Blue skies. Plenty of sunshine. The warmest of breezes.

I turn and look over my suntanned shoulder to see Maya and Will on the sand next to me. They met a few days ago, when she came over to the house on the premise of returning some study aids now her exams were over, though I think it was more a case of wanting to talk about her recent break-up with Zac and to get away from her parents. They were still insistent she was going to university. Maya was still resolved not to.

Poor Maya. She put such a brave face on things, but I know how devastated she’s been about Zac. When I drove her home from the theatre that night, she refused to cry and declared herself better off without him. Still, he was her first love, and we can all remember how intense that feels, even if it’s unrequited. Look at me with Ben. It’s more than thirty years ago and I can still conjure up those teenage feelings.

As it turned out, Maya didn’t end up talking about Zac, but talking – nay, flirting – with Will, who’d woken from a mammoth four-day sleeping session and was pottering around my kitchen in nothing but flip-flops and a sarong. He’s decided to stay a couple of weeks, and I couldn’t be happier. I look at him now, stretched out on the sand, looking like something from Love Island with his tanned muscular frame and brightly coloured board-shorts he brought back from Thailand. Headphones in, he’s scrolling through his phone and talking to Maya. I used to have to nag him a dozen times to do one thing, and now look at him. Multitasking. Who would ever have thought it?