“All this and we haven’t even been to the pictures yet.”

“But it’s on the cards, isn’t it? A future together, I mean. There’s something between us. We both know it.”

“Something. Maybe not enough.”

“But we can find out. Can’t we?”

“What did you have in mind?”

“I’ve been saving up. We can go anywhere you want. Just name it and we’ll be there.”

“Don’t get too excited yet, lover-boy. We might find out we’ve got nothing in common and we’re both rotten kissers.”

“I’ll take that chance.”

“And I’m not going to bed with you for at least the first twenty dates.”

“I’ll wait.”

She smiled. “All right then. Why don’t you take me out and show me a good time?”

Chapter Eighteen: Now

When the tide turns, stay out of the caves. The command had put down deep roots in Alicia’s soul. More than Don’t cross the road without me, which died quietly and painlessly around her tenth birthday. More than Don’t go off with boys you don’t know (as if any teenage girl ever kept to that rule). But Stay out of the caves had a special force because of what she’d seen.

It was a year when the spring tide coincided with a scorching Easter weekend. The beach disappeared beneath crowds of tender pink bodies. From the top of the cliffs they looked like baby mice, and like baby mice they were blind and innocent.

A father, a mother, three children, one dog. The sea had fled for what looked like miles, and they saw no sign of danger. They walked down to the caves, enjoying the sight of everyone else walking in the other direction.

The tide came in as it always did, in shallow deceptive inches of water, the smallest of small waves, except they didn’t retreat but instead washed on and on. Minutes later, the waves lapped at your knees rather than your ankles, and these waves, too, didn’t retreat but were followed by waves that clutched at your thighs, dragging you into the current. The family went into the first cave and came out, went into the second and came out. Where their footprints had been, inches of water now swirled.

They looked and laughed in amazement. They debated briefly whether to peek into the last cave. In the minute while they talked, the tide sloshed higher. They finally saw the danger and set off, paddling and then wading and then panicking. Alicia and her father saw it from the cliff, but it was in the days before her father had a mobile phone.

“Are they going to die?” She clutched at her father’s hand. “Are they?”

“They’ll make it,” her father said, but she could hear the doubt in his voice.

The water was at the father’s knees now. Everyone was beginning to struggle. He picked up his youngest, a skinny boy of about eight, carrying him as if he weighed nothing. The mother held tightly to the hands of the older two. The dog, a foolish spaniel with silky ears, floundered desperately behind.