‘Great!’ She had to shout to be heard over the bike’s racket. ‘We’re going to have such a brilliant summer!’

I wrapped my arms around Jago’s waist and he let the throttle go and we roared out of the gate and on to the lane. I smiled and rested my chin on his shoulder. I hardly ever got to go out on the bike with him. He’d passed his test a couple of weeks after his seventeenth birthday.

Want a ride on it?

But Mum had cried out in horror.

She’s not going out on that thing. She’s only just fourteen!

Her eyes had settled on the bike and misted with tears.

Later, after Mum left for work, he’d grabbed my hand and yanked me into the hall. For the first time since before our dad died he looked excited, as if someone had lit a fire behind his eyes. He slid his helmet on to my head and tightened the chin strap, then touched his finger to the tip of my nose.

There you go, Tam. All safe and sound.

He’d felt solid and strong like Dad and the wind rushed so fast into my face my eyes watered and even though I felt a bit scared I didn’t want the ride to ever end. When we got home I watched him wheel the bike into our small yard and run his hands over it lovingly. Then he walked back to me, cheeks ruddy, hair windblown. I handed his helmet back and thanked him, and he put his arm around my neck and pulled me close to him.

As if I’d take Dad’s bike out without you.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Present Day

It’s the anniversary of my father’s death. I spend it, as I always do, at our rock on the point looking over the house.

Even though the raw pain of it has dulled a little, years later I still feel it. The grief is a vein of quartz running through me. I walk along the path and climb the salty grass. The wind is blustering, unable to make up its mind which way to blow. I have a rucksack packed with a Thermos of tea and some fruitcake. I have his book on birds, the pages so worn in places the writing is unreadable, the tea-ring on its cover faded to a mere shadow.

I lie back and knot my fingers into the grass. The sky is dull. No discernible colour. I listen to the hateful sea. The sea which filled up his lungs so he could no longer breathe. The waves break below me like a metronome. I imagine the sound of his heartbeat and imagine I’m lying with my ear against his chest to hear it.

On this anniversary I can’t keep the raven from my thoughts. Or, indeed, the kittiwake chick torn to bloody shreds in its beak. Or how the sky had darkened to a blackish-purple, inching down to crush us as the rain advanced across the sea in a threatening sheet. Or the wind which angered the waves, forcing them larger and larger, each one crashing heavily on the rocks and firing spray up in deafening explosions.