‘Ya, cool, cool,’ he laughs, imitating me, ‘you just seem like it, that’s all,’

‘Anyway, tell me,’ I change the subject, ‘how’s this weed?’ I inspect the little packet in my bag again.

‘I don’t like the Jamaican stuff, it makes me sleepy.’ He gives his close-cut hair a lazy scratch. ‘But if you want to relax, that’s the stuff. The other one kind of revs you up.’ He presses his fists against his chest. I’m charmed by his theatrical expressions.

‘Got it, well yeah, I definitely want to relax. Also, what’s up with all this mess?’ I motion to the rubbish strewn all over the sand. Samuel laces his hands behind his neck. ‘Is that new? I’m trying to make sense of it…’ I glance around.

‘Tourism!’ he says quietly in Creole as I swat a fly. ‘The people who come here wouldn’t even clean up after themselves at home, you know, and there’s nowhere else to put the rubbish anyway. No one does anything about it. You should go to the Magic Garden – didn’t you see it from the plane? Mi foc, it’s crazy.’ Arms crossed over my chest, I watch him speak, his purple lips and gleaming skin. ‘It’s so bad that it should’ve been blocked ages ago.’

‘And what are we doing about that, or what? Who’s the governor?’

‘The governor is a Turk.’

‘A Turk?’ I hear myself yelp. That’s pretty strange.

‘Yep, exactly. But things aren’t like they used to be around here.’ His mouth twists into a frown. ‘Sometimes you wish they were. Back when you felt free.’ Samuel sighs and shrugs before saying goodbye – now he really does have to go.

He offers me some creased rolling papers and suddenly everything feels even more transcendent. The cry of a frigatebird, friend to the fisherman who rides out past the sea wall; the turbines’ roar – we were free, he’d said. I thank him for the favour. ‘All right!’ he says, and he’s off, sand flying up around his feet.

I’ve heard so many people reminisce about the time when people left their doors unlocked as they slept, but I honestly can’t find it anywhere in my own memory. Whenever I hear someone speak these words – Sami, my neighbours, whoever – I think of traditional wooden houses from the fifties, from my grandmother’s childhood.

I’m left with something else. Oil: here. I look out at Johnny Cay again, at what I now clearly register as an offshore platform.