Before I left, I told her about the mobile phone Arthur had bought, pretending that it had belonged to Mitch; how he had texted Oliver from the phone asking him to come round and clear the air. Oliver had replied that he’d be there.

I told Amber that Arthur knew Oliver and that he had somehow learnt that we’d shared an unsavoury history together. Oliver was the perfect person to put in the frame for the murder of his love rival. The CCTV footage and phone receipt were safely locked away and I would be handing them over to the police when I left the hospital.

Amber and I said goodbye and amicably shook hands.

Ten years had been a long time but there was no going back. Mitch had been the first love for us both and the deepest cut either of us would ever experience.

It was time to move on.

Summer 2015

Replacement love pretends just that.

An oxymoron teases with illusion that something second can usurp the place of something first; that which gave a fleeting hint of paradise.

Yet all at once a new more powerful

love appears as if by magic;

unexpected and unreal.

No second fiddle to first love lost,

a new more potent instrument plays to fill the void.

A child is born.

94

Rebecca

Although the summer sun poked through the fluffy clouds with quiet insistence, the north wind was biting. He ran along the beach, blindly tumbling over the pebbled sand, turning every few seconds to wave back at me. The castle ruins, sitting majestically on the remote headland, beckoned with their ghostly secrets.

‘Hurry up!’ he screamed, impatient to get there. His short legs ran and ran, propelling him further away from me and at that moment I recalled my father telling me to hold on loosely. Hold the grains of sand lightly in your hand and they will stay forever. Squeeze tightly and they’ll slip through your fingers. The sands of time.

I bent down and picked up a handful of dry grains and kissed them, remembering my father. How quietly he had spoken and shared his careworn wisdom. He used to say that one day I’d understand as he patted me on the head. Perhaps it was the sea breeze that squeezed the nostalgic tears from my eyes but, looking up and watching as the gulls coasted around the headland, I felt at peace with the world.

We climbed up to the ruins, Mitch clinging to my hand as he gasped in wonder at the great twin-towered keep.

‘Dunstanburgh Castle,’ I announced. ‘How would you like to live here?’

‘No thanks. We might get invaded by pirates.’ He screamed, wielding an imaginary sword in my direction. I stared out to sea and watched as the waves crashed along the shoreline and wondered at the beauty of it all.

Ten years had passed in the blink of an eye.