LITMIR.BIZ

       1 Sweetholm

      “Sweetholm! Do you remember it?”

      Tansy peered through the telescope. In its depths a piece of clockwork was counting out their time and turning it to cash. The island bobbed up against the glass. It was low and flat, but for the abrupt brown hill at the western tip.

      “Of course she doesn’t remember, Geoff,” said Tansy’s mother. “She was hardly walking when she came last.”

      “You’d be surprised what sticks sometimes. Even at that age.”

      Tansy opened her mouth to reply, then clapped it shut again. Dad was wrong, of course. Of course and as usual. But she didn’t need to say it. Not today, when everything ought to be perfect.

      “I remember it from the photos Uncle John sent. It looks closer than I imagined, though. Is it really five miles out? I can see buildings.”

      “Five miles by ferry,” said her father. “But that’s going from Plinth. And the ferry’s got shoals to negotiate, remember. Tricky waters.” He gestured to where the water was stippled with dark patches. “As the gull flies, we’re closer here on the headland. Of which, as you can see, Sweetholm is geologically an extension – and Longholm beyond it.”

      Geoff unfolded the map on his knee, standing like a flamingo with something to prove as a thermal billowed up and ballooned the paper.

      “It’s not that we don’t believe you, Dad,” said Tansy, turning back to the car.

      Their car was parked in the small semicircle of gravel at the head of the Down. A lane ran back, dividing one bleating field from another. It led into the main road down to Plinth. There were two cars parked there, their own and a black Volkswagen in which an elderly couple were eating sandwiches under the late June sun.

      Geoff ignored the retreat to the car and put another coin in the slot. He moved the telescope over to the next bay along their own coast, and the harbour town of Plinth. Every day in summer a ferry set sail from there to Sweetholm, with a cargo of ornithologists, hermits and trippers, though Sweetholm was just too far away to make a day trip comfortable. That was where the beauty of the place lay – in its splendid near-isolation. Then he noticed the time and that the ferry was already docked.

      But in such a place hurry was impossible. With the telescope still whirring, Geoff climbed into the car then inched it to the road and let it drop, braking all the time, down the steep, ear-popping hill into town. It was eleven in the morning and some of the shops were only just opening. One man, unlocking the door of his picture gallery, glanced at the car as it parked beside the ferry offices and shook his head with an air of frank reproof. Geoff looked out instinctively for No Parking signs, but found none. Perhaps they just looked disreputable in the unwashed Volvo.

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