shade of the grass, which fringed the dip in the dune like eyelashes, and unpacked the swimming costumes. Then they took off their sand-laden shoes and walked to the sea. A day at the beach always began for them with this small act of homage.
The tide was coming in slowly and the sun glittered in patches where the water had gathered. The ridges of moist sand were so firm beneath their bare, car-softened feet that it was almost painful to walk. Charlie squatted down to examine the intricate piles of wormed sand and to hook up fragments of mussel shell with pruned fingers. His yellow shorts were too large round his waist, despite Carrie having sewn up an inch on either side, and when he ran he gathered them up with one hand to prevent them falling down. The perfectly blue sky stretched away, until it imperceptibly merged with the sea at a point so distant that it was impossible to see where sea ended and sky began. It felt as if you were walking in a thin membrane stretched to infinity. Although the day was warm, after a couple of weeks of overcast weather, the warmth hadn’t yet found its way into the sea.
‘Can I go swimming?’ asked Charlie, oblivious to the temperature. He threw himself forward in the shallows, kicking vigorously, churning up the sand, trying to tempt them in by pulling at their ankles. He was beginning to learn to swim, but still needed his inflatable wings. Carrie and Damian kept walking and Charlie splashed alongside them. It seemed as if the water would never get deeper and that the three of them would move forward forever. Hunger finally made them turn back to the beach. That, and the fact that Charlie’s lips were turning blue. Damian lifted his son up and wrapped him in his shirt.
When they turned round and headed back for their spot in the dunes, they saw a flamingo standing in the water between them and the beach. Carrie thought at first it was a blow-up toy, too impossibly bright to be real. Its exotic shape and colour out of place in the pale, bleached landscape. But then it bent its neck and dipped its head repeatedly in the water.
‘It must have escaped from a bird sanctuary,’ said Damian.
The bird shook itself, as if, like them, it had expected a warmer ocean, took a clumsy run forward and then lifted off with a curious sideways movement, head and neck stretched out, its legs trailing behind like an afterthought. They watched it fly away until it was just a speck.
‘Will it come back, Mum?’
Charlie asked her the question because he knew the beginning of a story when he saw one, and indeed, Carrie was already thinking about a possible bedtime tale which could feature a confused flamingo called Fabian and perhaps Florette, a lost flamingo wife.
‘Why is it pink?’
Damian knew it was something to do with its diet, but was unable to say what it could find on a Norfolk beach that would be pink enough to maintain its plumage.
‘Will it go grey after a while?’ asked Charlie anxiously.
‘I’m not sure, pal,’ said Damian. ‘Perhaps he will find his way home where his brothers and sisters and a bucket of fresh shrimps will be waiting for him.’
After he had been persuaded into a fleece, they had lunch. Charlie ate his bread and an apple and said he wanted to save his cake for later. He sat for a while, watching the boy whose encampment was nearest theirs. He was squatting on his heels and digging energetically. Carrie could tell that Charlie wanted to play with him by the way that he kept sliding his small feet through the sand.
‘Why don’t you go and make friends?’
‘I think he’s older than me,’ said Charlie. She knew how much he hated to be at a disadvantage.
‘He looks pretty much the same age to me.’
Charlie got to his feet and wandered in a self-consciously casual way over to where the boy was scooping up sand. For a while Charlie pretended to be looking for shells, but then he gave up dissembling and stood over the other boy, watching his endeavours with a critical eye.
After what he clearly considered to be the correct amount of time, Charlie finally spoke.
‘My name’s Charlie. I’m five. How old are you?’
The boy looked up at him and answered. Carrie didn’t catch what he said, but it must have been encouraging because Charlie got down on his hands and knees and started burrowing too. They each began to excavate from a different point and dug along towards each other. Whenever their hands made contact under the cool sand and another tunnel was formed, they exclaimed in surprise. Carrie watched them for a while, but then the effects of lunch and the sun began to catch up with her and she lay back on the picnic rug. She could hear Damian turning the pages of the newspaper, the occasional voice shouting, and once, what sounded like a helicopter, but the sounds were muffled. Black shapes swarmed behind her eyelids and she dozed. She woke when Damian tickled her bare feet.
‘Sorry to disturb you, sleepy head,’ he said, ‘but I need to go to the toilet. I’ll have to go back to the car park.’
Carrie shook herself awake and sat up to look at Charlie, who was still playing with his new friend. She got her magazine out of her bag, rolled over onto her stomach and tried to read but the words swam in front of her eyes and she laid her head down on the paper and slid back into sleep. Charlie’s voice woke her the second time. She rolled over onto her side and squinted up at him, but the sun was too bright to see his face.
‘Can I go down to the sea again?’
‘Only if you go with your father.’
‘Dad’s still not come back.’
‘Well you’ll just have to wait until he does. Where’s that other little boy gone?’
‘He had to go for a walk with his mum.’
‘Is he nice?’
‘Yes.’ Charlie made his case by ticking off his new friend’s attributes on his fingers.
‘One, he is five. Two, he has yellow hair. Three, he isn’t mad on bats. Four, he likes Scooby Doo. Please can I go down to the sea?’
‘Just wait a bit, I can’t leave the bags. Wait till Dad gets back.’
Carrie sat up, and Charlie sat down next to her, looking up every now and again to see if Damian was coming. Finally he spotted him in the distance making his way back down the beach.
‘Can I go and meet him … please … and then we can swim …?’
‘Only if you give me a kiss first,’ said Carrie, lying back down. He knelt next to her and planted his lips on her cheek, stroked one sandy hand across her face.
‘I love you every single day,’ said Charlie.
‘And I love you every single day too,’ said Carrie, and shut her eyes.
Afterwards, she wasn’t able to say how long she had been asleep. She thought it could only have been a matter of minutes.
‘Where’s Charlie?’ asked Damian, appearing suddenly above her.
Carrie, like every parent, was always only a moment away from panic. All it took was for her to lose sight of him when he lagged behind in a crowd, or when he was hidden by a slide in a park, and she felt a dip in her stomach. She felt that familiar lurch now.
‘I
