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      The sea was what his father called a cowshitty sea – a brownish, algae green, that meant it would be good fishing, even though it sounded like it would be bad fishing. But when he said something was bullshit, like the landlord raising the rent, or not fixing the oven, or mentioning that he might put the flat up for sale, then that was definitely something bad. Except when he was in the pub, in a group, and then it could be said and the laughter would be low and raucous as seagulls. To Ivor, it was all in the same murky category as words like restive – Ivor is a very restive boy, his teacher would say into the phone, is everything alright? Apparently that didn’t mean that he was calm and easy.

      The beach had been scraped and dragged by the winter storms. It was almost March now and where there had been sand there were stones, and where there had been stones there were channels that kept their water long after the tide had gone back out.

      Crystal and Gull Gilbert were throwing stones at a limpet on a rock. The rock was covered in a rind of barnacles and there were anemones deep in the cracks; dark red and glistening like sweets.

      Crystal picked up a handful of stones and threw them. One of them hit the limpet but it didn’t move. She went up and pressed her hand against it. The limpet grated a few millimetres across the rock. ‘That one up there looks empty,’ she said. She was pushing the limpet, but staring at a house on the cliff.

      ‘Let’s do something else,’ Ivor said. The week billowed and sagged around them, like a tent that might stay up, or might at any moment collapse. It was a school holiday. They’d already wrecked Crystal’s TV and been forced out of Gull Gilbert’s house by his brother, who had a girl hidden in his sour, dim bedroom. Ivor had seen her feet sticking out from under the bed.

      He put his hand in one

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