the bubble blowing machine

Ian had owned the green mini for over five months. But he still felt a sense of pride standing on the garage forecourt filling it with a fiver's worth of four star. He kept his eyes fixed on the pump's digital display, counting out the pounds in his head. The first time he'd put petrol in the car, he'd looked at the wrong numbers and had brought five litres by mistake. It came to just under two quid. Fortunately, the mini only had a small fuel tank and he'd realised his mistake before querying the amount with the man in the garage. It wasn't as embarrassing as it might have been had he been driving some enormous saloon. But the man had still given Ian a funny look as he'd counted out his change.

Now, Ian felt like an old hand at the pump. He was as expert with a nozzle as any of those old boys who, with bent backs and shrivelled fingers, sometimes shuffled out to serve him in isolated village garages where the white numbered displays on the pumps still clicked round mechanically.

Ian had filled up at one or two of those old-style pumps himself and, although they were slow, he liked them. It were almost as if you could feel the numbers pulsating through the pump's handle. No problem stopping dead on the zeros. Digital displays were more awkward. Sure, you could stop at nine ninety-six or four-ninety-seven and carefully spurt up to the round pound. But where was the skill in that?

Ian stopped the display on nine ninety-nine. He was slightly disappointed, but consoled himself that it was far better to be a penny under than a penny over. He smiled at Chrissy through the car window as he squirted the last pennyworth in and twisted the petrol cap back on. He didn't bother locking the cap. He never did, presuming that no one would bother to nick petrol from a beaten up old mini, and even if they did, they would only get away with a couple of gallons worth.

His mates with their Escorts and Cavaliers used to rip the piss out of his car. But which of them felt safe leaving their petrol cap unlocked on the street at night? Which of them got over fifty to the gallon? As he always told them, "I'd rather spend the money on beer than bloody petrol."

Before going into the Stop n' Shop to pay for the fuel he opened the driver's door and dropped the keys on the seat.

"Do you want something to eat?" he asked Chrissy.

She shook her head.

"I'm all right at the moment," she said.

"It could be quite a long drive," he said. "I thought I might get some sweets or something." Anxious that he might have sounded a bit childish, he added jokily, "I mean, you've gotta have sweets if you're going on holiday. It's in the Highway Code, that."

"OK," she said.

"What do you prefer?"

"I don't mind."

"Wine gums, sherbet lemons, liquorice allsorts?"

"I really don't mind," she repeated with her usual politeness and smiled. "You choose."

He nodded.

"I'll get something to drink as well."

"OK," she said and smiled again.

Chrissy was a year younger than him, nineteen. Some girls that age looked older, as if they were well into their twenties. But Chrissy still had the soft face of a teenager, her cheeks always flushed with a slight blush as if she were permanently slightly embarrassed.

Her body was teenagerish too; firm and well rounded, her thighs wide but smooth and her breasts large and symmetrical, surging forward like torpedo warheads, not sagging down like they would with the onset of real womanhood when the choice between bony skinniness or slobby fleshiness became evermore distinct. No, for the time being, Chrissy didn't have to worry about things like that. She was in her prime, with the shape of a woman and the vitality of a child. Yea, Ian was looking forward to their holiday.

Ian had wanted wine gums but the garage didn't have any large packets, only a small tube that would be gone in a couple of mouthfuls, so he brought half-a pound of liquorice allsorts instead. He'd been trying to cut back on the sweets since he'd found a hole in one of his back teeth. He probed it with his tongue as he queued in the garage reaching out to the display by the window for a couple of cans of Diet Pepsi, a pack of cheese flavour crisps and a Ripple bar for Chrissy. She liked Ripples.

He looked out across the forecourt and Chrissy waved at him. He held the bar of chocolate up to the window and pointed to it. She nodded and smiled and he felt suddenly happy, smiling at the woman in the garage as he paid for his petrol and the other stuff with his Switch card. She smiled back at him. She was probably just doing her job (not wanting to be caught looking glum by the security camera above the till). But it felt to Ian that her smile was his smile, as if she had caught his good humour, as if he and Chrissy had generated a sudden outbreak of happiness which might spread like chicken pox, so that everyone who came to buy petrol from the garage that day would, unavoidably, leave smiling.

Back in the car, Ian opened the allsorts and took out one of the bobbly blue ones which were like chewy jelly and tasted of aniseed. He put on his live tape of Primal Scream (a fuzzy copy of a bootleg which Chrissy's sister had bought at a gig in Manchester), turned the volume up and squealed, quite unintentionally, away from the pumps.

He headed up towards the roundabout, but instead of turning right down the ring road towards the M4, he went straight across heading into the countryside south of Westing.

"Aren't we going down the motorway," asked Chrissy.

"No, it's quicker this way," said Ian. "We can cut across down through Salisbury. It's all A roads." He turned the music up and drummed along on the steering wheel, distortion rattling through the car.

"Turn it down," said Chrissy. "It sounds terrible."

"What," shouted Ian, feigning deafness. He turned the volume up a further notch.

"Stop it," said Chrissy. He grinned and turned the volume down again. Chrissy ejected the tape.

"Ohhh," said Ian. "I was enjoying that."

"Well I wasn't," said Chrissy. Her voice was stern but she wasn't angry. They were just mucking around. Teasing each other. Having a bit of fun.

She put on a compilation of dance music called Rhythms of the Night, which consisted mainly of watered-down rave and techno numbers full of vague lyrical references to mind altering substances and bass beats that sounded as if someone with their fist wrapped in cottonwool were continually punching a very cheap, plastic washing-up bowl.

Ian pretended to dance, taking both hands from the steering wheel and waving them in the air.

"Watch out," said Chrissy.

"It's all right," said Ian. "It's a straight road."

They approached a small roundabout. Ian slowed down.

"Which way now?" he said.

He wasn't really asking Chrissy, just voicing his uncertainty.

"I don't know," said Chrissy.

"Have a look at the map then," said Ian, pulling in at the edge of the roundabout. Chrissy picked the blue map book up from the floor by her feet and opened it at random.

"Where are we?" she asked.

Ian looked over at the map. It was open at a page of unrecognisable roads and places, with Shrewsbury in the top right hand corner.

"Well we're not in bloody North Wales, are we," he said.

"I don't know," said Chrissy. "I don't even know where we're going."

"The bloody south coast," said Ian. "Here give it here."

He turned the music off and took the book from Chrissy's lap and leafed through the pages.

A dark-coloured saloon drew up behind them at the roundabout and impatiently revved it's engine. The driver, a stereotype salesman with a neatly groomed moustache and a freshly laundered blazer hanging in his side window, paused for a couple of moments then edged round the mini and tooted his horn as he roared off.

"Fuck off," said Ian, waving two fingers at the saloon. He reached forward to put on his hazard warning lights. "Fascist twat." Chrissy folded her arms. She didn't like it when he got angry.

"OK," said Ian after studying the map for a few moments further, "I think we turn right here and then we should reach a T-junction, where we turn left down the A354 towards Salisbury. Then we can cut straight down to the coast from there."

He put the map back in Chrissy's lap (quite roughly, still angry at being beeped at).

"OK?" he asked, partly meaning - do you know roughly where we are now? and partly - do you forgive me for getting angry? He smiled awkwardly, tight-lipped, his cheeks bulging slightly as if his mouth were full of food.

Chrissy looked uncertain.

"Look. There's Salisbury," he said, stabbing at the map with his finger.

Chrissy placed her finger on the page.

"Where do we go after that," she said?

"It should still be the A354," said Ian. He switched off the hazard lights, looked briefly over his shoulder and started up again, taking the right turn off the roundabout.

Chrissy traced the road over the page.

"It ends up in Dorchester," she said. "Do we want to go there?"

"I guess so," he said. "How far's that from the coast?"

"About ten miles," she said.

"There should be some holiday places near there then," he said.

"I can see Weymouth," said Chrissy. "That's quite close."

"I don't want to go to bloody Weymouth," said Ian. "Where else is there?"

"I can't really see anywhere else," said Chrissy.

They reached the A354. A large sign pointed towards Salisbury. Ian turned out left, in front of a lorry and put the music back on as he accelerated away.

"There must be somewhere," he said, looking in his mirror and increasing his speed as the lorry thundered up behind him. Ian looked over at the map. He couldn't see any name he recognised.

"You choose somewhere," he said.

"Where?" asked Chrissy.

"Anywhere west of Weymouth'll do," he said casually. "There's loads of little holiday places down there."

Chrissy closed her eyes and pushed her finger nail into the page. When she opened her eyes she saw that she'd ended up in the sea. She was going to make a joke about it to Ian, but then decided against it and traced a line vertically upwards until she reached the coast.

"Kettleton Castle," she said.

"Where?" he said. He looked across at where her finger rested at the end of a white road which stopped a couple of millimetres short of the sea in a scattering of little white squares denoting a handful of houses.

"Never bloody heard of it," he said.

"Shall I choose somewhere else?" she asked.

"No, no, you've chosen it now," he grinned. "There's no going back."

Chrissy looked worried.

"Hey, we might as well see what it's like," he said reassuringly. "If it's no good we can always go somewhere else. There's plenty of time."

Chrissy forced a smile.

"I suppose so," she said.

All that remained of the castle at Kettleton was a single crumbling turret, a few loose stones and some bumps in the grass where walls and staircases had once stood. It wasn't really a castle at all anymore, but the people of Kettleton (all two hundred or so of them) were proud of their ruins and still referred to the castle as if it remained a functioning bastion essential to the defence of the realm.

There were two small shops in Kettleton. Both of them were next to the car park and both were packed full of tea towels, postcards and boxes of fudge picturing a water-colour image of the ruins on top of the cliffs and the words A Gift From Kettleton Castle.

Beyond the car park was a storm wall and a small cove with a beach of large pebbles surrounded by low grassy cliffs. Inland from the car park, perched on the slopes above the single track road which led down to the beach, was a scattering of houses and caravans. The village had no real focal point except for the shops and a small hotel which stood, aloof and alone, up on the cliff opposite the tumble-down turret.

"What do you think?" asked Ian as they sat in the virtually empty car park, munching the last of the liquorice allsorts.

"It's nice," said Chrissy.

"Not much of a beach," said Ian. He looked glumly at a sheet of white plastic and a length of blue rope which lay on the pebbles among the seaweed and timbers, bits of crab and broken shell. His hands clung to the steering wheel, jiggling it back and forth like a kid pretending to drive.

"I like it," said Chrissy. "It's nice and calm."

"Shall we go and check out that place back up the road then?" said Ian wearily. She nodded. He started to turn the key in the ignition. She reached out across the steering wheel and held his hand.

"Lets stay here for a bit first," she said.

And they sat there for a while just watching the sea lapping in and out of pebbles and crashing against big rocks at the bottom of the cliffs.

On the way down to the beach they'd passed a narrow gravel track. At the entrance to the track was a sign which proclaimed in large letters, Kettleton Castle Hotel - Visitors Welcome, and in smaller letters, Restaurant and Bar Open to Non-residents. Ian suggested that should walk up there first 'just to check it out.'

"Anyway, I need some fresh air," he said.

Chrissy didn't mind. Although it was quite a chilly day, it was bright and dry (save for the occasional gust of spray which whipped in from the sea). She stood and stretched her arms out, breathing in the salty air.

Ian locked the mini and put his jacket on, an old suit jacket, that his dad had once worn for work. Ian had his bomber jacket with him as well, but he'd packed that away in the top of his sports bag. It was fine for wearing round town and for walks, but with his old jeans he was worried that it made him look like a bit of a thug.

His dad's old jacket was a bit nerdy, but it made him look less threatening, a bit more gentile and academic, as if he might be a student of marine biology rather than a temporary stores assistant at a warehouse which distributed cut-price TVs, videos and hi-fis (a large proportion of which seemed to be sent back for repair).

Ian was glad to be free from it all for a couple of days - shifting palette-loads of personal stereos, pissing about on the forklifts and unwrapping box after box of jammed videos, whilst conjuring up convincing excuses to explain to the snooty cows in the offices upstairs why some old dear's CD player which had been sent to the warehouse eleven weeks previously hadn't been returned to her yet.

Halfway up the path to the hotel, Ian stopped and looked down at the sea. He imagined, with great satisfaction, backing a lorry-load of busted audio visual equipment up to the edge of the cliff and tipping the bloody lot over.

"What are you thinking?" asked Chrissy.

"You're right," he said. "It is nice here."

She smiled and took his arm and they headed up to the hotel.

From the outside, the Kettleton Castle Hotel looked pretty grubby. It's four story, white-washed facade was covered in a patchy, green-black discoloration as if it had been smeared with a mixture of seaweed and soot. However, inside, the hotel was surprisingly clean and old-fashioned, full of spotless pre-war furniture and antiques like a film set for an Agatha Christie mystery. A stuffed sea fish in a wooden cabinet hung beside a grandfather clock with a sun-shaped pendulum, a huge semi-circular mirror with a carved wooden shelf built into the bottom of the frame and a bookshelf full of old books with gold lettering on the spines.

The lady who ran the hotel with her husband was called Mrs Lewis, Carol Lewis to be precise. She hadn't introduced herself as such but Chrissy and Ian had heard her husband calling to her from an upstairs room as they waited in the lobby.

"Carol, Carol. I think we've got visitors, love. Carooolll."

Mrs Lewis was in her thirties and very friendly, immediately putting them at their ease. She seemed slightly surprised to see them at first, not so much because they were relatively young and scruffy, but because the hotel didn't receive many unexpected midweek visitors in October.

"What brings you to Kettleton?" Mrs Lewis asked them.

"We just picked it off the map," said Ian.

"We thought it sounded nice," said Chrissy.

"I hope you weren't expecting to find a massive castle," Mrs Lewis laughed.

"Oh no. We just wanted somewhere to stay," said Ian. He blushed, thinking that it sounded as if they were on some kind of dirty weekend (or rather dirty midweek break). He added hurriedly, "There's no sea where we live. So we thought we'd head for the coast for a couple of days."

"Where are you from then?" asked Mrs Lewis.

"Westing," said Ian apologetically.

"Oh really, my sister-in-law used to live near there," she said. "It's quite a nice little town isn't it."

"It used to be," said Ian. "It's all housing estates and offices now."

"Well it's some years since we've been there." said Mrs Lewis. "We tend to drive past on the motorway these days and come off at the next junction and cut across country."

Ian smiled ruefully.

"I suppose it's all changed," said Mrs Lewis. Ian nodded.

"You wouldn't recognise it," he said.

They arranged to stay for one night and went back down to the car park by the beach, gambolling the last few yards down a steep, deeply furrowed path to the mini, where they stood breathlessly for a moment drinking in the sea air before driving up the twisting track to the hotel.

Their room was on the far side of the hotel overlooking the sea, right on the edge of the cliff. Most people preferred to sleep at the front of the building, overlooking the car park and the castle, Mrs Lewis said, because the noise of the waves bashing against the cliffs kept them awake. However, out of season, she explained, she generally let her permanent residents (a mixture of elderly and mildly mentally ill ladies) have those rooms.

"If you really find the sound of the sea disturbs you too much, please do say, because I can easily rearrange things," said Mrs Lewis.

"Oh no, it's very nice," said Chrissy looking round the room.

"Yea, no problem," said Ian. He was going to add, 'we didn't plan to do much sleeping anyway,' just as a joke, but decided against it.

The room was right on the very corner of the hotel. It was spacious with high ceilings and old wallpaper, on which hung amateurish oil paintings of boats and, inevitably, the castle ruins. There was no television in the room (Mrs Lewis said it was out for repair and she'd see if she could get her husband to bring them one from one of the other rooms) but it did have an en-suite shower.

Opposite the door to the shower room (which was more like a shower cupboard) was a large but rather flimsy old wardrobe with a stack of drawers inside, three of which were labelled with yellowed, china tags - socks, shirts and gloves. There were two windows in the room, both of which directly overlooked the sea. And beneath one of the windows was the largest bed either of them had ever seen.

As Chrissy unpacked her bag, Ian knelt on the pillows and looked down at the dizzy drop to the rocks below. A seagull landed on the windowsill outside and tapped at the warped glass with it's beak. Ian tapped back. To his surprise, the seagull didn't fly away. It just turned it's head to one side and looked curiously at him, then walked along the windowsill and tapped again further down. Chrissy joined Ian kneeling on the pillows, tapping at the glass until the seagull got bored or frightened and flew away with a shriek.

They hadn't intended to make love right there and then, it just happened. Ian had poked Chrissy in the bum with his fingers pretending they were the beak of a seagull and soon they were wrestling on the bed, rolling over and over on the massive mattress, pretending it was a raft and if they fell off the edge they'd be eaten by sharks swimming through the carpet.

As they struggled together, giggling, Ian had quite inadvertently clutched Chrissy's breasts. Jokingly he cupped the swell of her flesh and given it a gentle squeeze. Instead of pulling away, she rolled over on top of him and started to kiss him with a passion she'd not shown since the first couple of weeks they'd been going out together.

Half-way through their love making, Chrissy'd murmured that she thought she'd heard a knocking noise.

"It's probably just the bed rattling," Ian had answered. But later after they'd shared a shower and got dressed, they discovered a television in the corridor outside and a do not disturb sign hung over the handle of the bedroom door. They laughed and hurried sheepishly downstairs, leaving the key on the reception desk in the hotel lobby.

It was gone two o'clock by the time they got back down to the beach. One of the two small shops by the car park had opened and, hungry after their exertions, they went in to buy something to eat. Although it was well into autumn, the shop's walls were still piled high with summer things - a basket full of beach balls, racks of cheap sunglasses, badminton sets, tiny cricket bats and plastic buckets and spades (which seemed to Ian slightly superfluous given the lack of any sand on the beach).

The lady in the shop was just as summery as her stock. She had short, blondish hair, and was so darkly tanned she appeared almost Indian. She seemed about the same age as Mrs Lewis up at the hotel, thought Chrissy, but her face was prematurely wrinkled, weathered by sun and saltwater. The lady was reading a local newspaper and Chrissy noticed that her ringless hands, which were the colour of caramel, were thick and rough like those of a man. She wore a navy blue sweatshirt with a white yacht motif on the left breast, and Chrissy guessed she was probably a keen sailor.

Chrissy could just imagine the woman wearing a huge yellow souwester, sailing through a gale out on the cove or propping up the bar of some harbour-side tavern shouting 'splice the main brace,' or whatever it was that those nautical types were given to saying.

"Do you have any rolls?" Chrissy asked the lady as Ian looked through a box containing assorted plastic toys in garish colours.

"No, I'm sorry my dear," said the lady. "We had some bread earlier on, but I think I sold the last loaf to Mrs Phillipson before lunch."

She walked out from behind the counter and round to an empty shelf where a few crumbs and a solitary, sad cream doughnut sat on crumpled white tissue paper.

"All gone I'm afraid," she said apologetically. "But I've got a spare loaf and some ham at the house. So, I can easily pop back and make you some sandwiches."

"Oh no, no really," said Chrissy embarrassed by the lady's concern.

"It would only take a couple of minutes," said the lady.

"It's very kind of you," said Chrissy. "But, actually, I don't eat ham."

"I've got some mature cheddar if you'd prefer," said the lady. "Very strong it is. A marvellous bit of cheese. I can't get enough of it," she laughed.

Ian approached the counter holding a packet containing pieces of fluorescent orange and green plastic.

"We can just get some crisps and stuff," he said.

Chrissy nodded.

"We only really wanted a snack," she said.

"You may have whatever you want my dears," said the lady and reached beneath the counter. "Crisps is it?" They could hear the rustle of packets in cardboard boxes. "Right, we've got cheese and onion, plain, prawn cocktail, barbecued, onion." She paused for breath.

"Cheese and onion and prawn cocktail," said Ian. He looked at Chrissy. She nodded.

"Just a pack of each is it?" said the lady, emerging from beneath the counter, her face red from bending down.

"Yes please," said Ian, "and this as well."

He put the packet he was clutching down on the counter.

"What's that?" hissed Chrissy.

"It's a bubble blowing machine," said Ian. The lady stared sceptically at Ian as she picked up the packet and tapped an extra one pound twenty-nine into the till. Chrissy looked embarrassed. Ian handed the lady a couple of pound coins.

"What did you buy that for?" asked Chrissy as they left the shop and walked across the car park to the beach.

"Oh, I thought I might play cricket with it," said Ian sarcastically. He offered her the crisps, both packets dangling from one hand. Chrissy snatched the packet of prawn cocktail. "She must have thought you were mad," said Chrissy.

"Oh yea," said Ian. "The crazy sandwich woman thinks I'm mad?" He mimicked her west country accent. "Would you like some of my luverly cheddaaarrr?"

"She was only trying to be nice," said Chrissy.

"She was bloody nuts," said Ian.

"Don't be horrible," said Chrissy.

"I'm not."

"You are."

They reached the storm wall and clambered down sea-battered steps to the pebbles.

"Anyway, I was only joking," said Ian.

"You were just being stupid, as usual," said Chrissy with mock indignation.

"Oh well, suit yourself," said Ian and made for the sea, carefully steeping and jumping between rocks and pebbles. The tide had begun to retreat, but was still high on the beach, splishing and sploshing around rock pools. Ian clambered over to the largest pool he could see, by the edge of the cliff beneath the castle. He rolled up his sleeves and eased his hand into the icy water, lifting rocks from the pool's shallow sediment, looking for crabs.

When Chrissy reached Ian, he was lying on his stomach along a long flat mantle of damp rock, reaching into a cave beneath, swirling his fingers through the water.

"What are you doing now?" she asked. She was slightly out of breath, not from the exertion of climbing across the beach, but more from exasperation after slipping on a wet rock and plunging one foot into a pool.

"I'm looking for a fish," he said. "It went in here a minute ago."

She sat down on the rock and unbuckled her shoe which was black with a round toe and a chunky heel, rather like a boot that'd had the top cut off it. She laid the shoe on a dry rock and peeled her damp shock off. Her toes were red and numb. She tutted loudly.

Ian looked up. He withdrew his arm from the pool and sat up.

"Going paddling?" he asked.

"No. I fell in," she said grumpily.

Ian laughed. "Ahhh," he murmured, and reached out to rub her bare toes. Chrissy kicked his hand away.

"Get off!" she said, annoyed.

"Sorrryyy!" said Ian. He threw a large rock into the pool. It fell with a dull thud, sending up a cloud of sediment and splashing a sheet of cold water onto the rock where Chrissy was sitting only narrowly missing the trailing hem of her skirt.

"Watch it," she said, and pulled her skirt up round her knees.

Ian laughed. He picked up an even larger rock and held it, arms trembling, above the pool as if he were about to drop it.

"If you dare," said Chrissy. "I'll bloody push you in." Ian put the rock back down. They sat for a few moments looking out to sea. The sky was clouding over, and a stiff breeze whisked through the waves and whistled across the beach.

"Let's go back now," said Chrissy shivering. "It's getting cold."

"In a minute," said Ian.

He kicked a limpet off the edge of the rock face by his foot. It splashed into the middle of the pool.

"Don't do that," said Chrissy.

"Cor, you're worse than my mum," he said. "Don't do this, don't do that."

"Well," she said. "I thought you were supposed to be against cruelty to animals."

"Jesus," said Ian. "It was only a bloody limpet."

"Hypocrite," she said.

Ian just grinned. He found it hard to have much sympathy for limpets. Cute-eyed fox cubs orphaned by hunting, yes. Calves exported to barbaric veal farms, yes. Rabbits and monkeys used for testing household cleaners, yes. He could feel sorry for all of them. But not some bloody mollusc. He kicked another limpet off its rock. Chrissy sighed.

"You child," she said.

"It can bloody swim can't it," said Ian and threw a pebble at an anemone in the pool.

Chrissy got up.

"I'm going back to the hotel," she said.

"OK," said Ian and skimmed another pebble into the water.

"Coming?" she asked, picking up her shoe, the sock scrunched up inside.

"In a minute," he said.

"Suit yourself," she said and started to pick a path back towards the car park.

As Chrissy wandered off, Ian winced at the painful slowness of her stumbling progress between the rocks. He imagined he could climb the rock face to the cliff above, run down the path and still get there before her. It was a stupid idea, of course. He'd never really done any kind of climbing before, and it was at least fifty or sixty feet up to the castle at the top. But...

He'd only intended to climb a short distance up the cliff face and then call out to Chrissy to wind her up. However, once he'd tucked the plastic bubble machine into the belt of his jeans and started climbing, some hidden instinct took over. He couldn't stop himself reaching up to grab the next jutting hand hold, lifting his foot to the next wedge of rock. He kept on going, up and up, quicker and quicker, without stopping until he finally reached the grass at the top of the cliff, and looked down with a mixture of horror and glee at the distance he'd just climbed.

By the time Ian had completed his climb, Chrissy had almost reached the storm wall. As he looked down there seemed a dramatic (and rather romantic) loneliness about her - a solitary young girl, shivering and picking her way, barefoot (well, half-barefoot) across a desolate beach. He wondered if she'd feel like making love again that evening. He thought she might, seeing as it had been so quick and spur-of-the- momentish earlier on.

"Hoi, Chrissy!" he called out. "Yoo-hoo!"

She looked back across the beach towards the rock pool at the base of the cliff. And turned and continued on her way thinking that he must be hiding behind a rock somewhere.

"Hoi Chrissy," he called out again. This time she realised his voice was coming from above and she looked up scanning the rocks, peering higher and higher up the cliff face until she saw him up by the tumbled turret, waving both arms about with a foolish grin. She felt annoyed by his stupidity. But, also, couldn't help but be slightly impressed by his bravery. No, not his bravery, his energy. Yes, that was it, energy - misplaced perhaps, but potent all the same.

Ian was like a character out of Viz comic, thought Chrissy, some annoying hyperactive kid constantly seeking something new to do - Ian Divine, always looking for a cliff to climb. Ian was actually very far from being divine. At times he could be positively irritating. But at least he wasn't boring. At least he took her places, even if they weren't the places she really wanted to go. She couldn't help but laugh as he galloped down the cliff path arms outstretched for balance like a child. Later, if he felt up to it, they could make love again, she decided, properly this time. She smiled and waved at him.

When Ian got down the car park, they sat together on the storm wall, and Chrissy watched as he carefully pieced together the garish plastic pieces of the bubble machine. It was a cross between a pipe and a windmill, which blew out streams of bubbles. They had a competition to see who could blow the biggest bubble, watching them drift over the beach and out to sea.

Ian blew one bubble that kept on growing and growing until it seemed to be the size of a weather balloon (like the balloon that used to chase people down the beach in that old TV series The Prisoner). Then suddenly it broke free, improbably large and shimmering as if it were made from molten jewels. They watched it drift, blue and gold and green and silver, above the grey sea, across the grey sky.

Although Ian and Chrissy did eventually lose sight of the bubble, they never actually saw it burst, and so imagine it, even now, in their separate memories of that afternoon and the night that followed and the morning that followed that, still floating out there, out there somewhere between the sky and the sea.