How did it all begin? Imperceptibly. Then, in a yellowing of light.

     It had been a long summer day but once the twilight had begun it gathered pace. Brilliance faded from the sky’s height and seeped downwards into a glowing frieze on the distant perimeter of the sea. The strand below us was almost hidden by bushes that grew up the steep cliff-sides of the bay, and these whins and brambles were now blurring into indistinct masses.

     We all – four girls, four boys − sat looking north, out over the vast plain of water. The more the light diminished, the stranger the sea became. It still glistened, even as the land around us darkened and seemed to invite us into its confidence. The grass around us was stirred by a small breeze. Touching our skin and hair as though to point out the cooling of the day, it created an intimacy among us. In the softening light, gestures and smiles stood out more. Voices and laughter were companionably low.

     I felt very young in the face of the ancient sea and the old, shadowy land but nevertheless a tiny part of it all. The bay had been like this for generations, for centuries of centuries and that made my own youth all the more exhilarating. But I was uneasy too. So many things changed so quickly. So much was outside my control. If only it could always be calm like this, undisturbed as the rocks and the headland.

     Clamped on my eyes − a pair of hands! I didn’t need to guess whose they were. “Lay off, Dave,” I said, almost good-humouredly. I knew he’d have preferred more of a reaction but he was a bit much. Now he was noisily going on about something to his mate, Kevin and one of the French guys, Luc. All the quietness was gone. I tried to cling to it, sitting very still, hugging my knees, focusing on the horizon, but it was no use. Luc, too, I saw, pulled away a little and stood, also looking out to sea.

     “Down to the beach!” Dave cried.

     “Midnight dip!” yelled Kevin, as he mimed immersing a toe.

     “That’s hours away.”

     “You hope!” said Kevin. “I’ve seen you shivering on the edge!”

     Dave shoved him and tussled with him and we all, in a sudden burst of yelling energy, took off down the path.

     The closeness amongst the eight of us was superficial. We girls knew each other from school. Luc and Philippe were hikers from France. Dave and Kevin certainly weren’t! Like us, they were on holiday from Belfast up here on the coast. We didn’t know them but we knew where they came from.

     Getting down to the beach was difficult in parts. Roots snaked across the path which dropped in merciless twists and the fine, white sand made footing insecure. At a place where the path tipped over a stony ridge, Dave lurched against Kevin, launching both of them off the edge so that they tumbled headlong out of sight. As one, we stopped dead. But there was Dave, a long way below, shouting up at us, “Take the quick way down!” He sprang up, then pushed Kevin, who was just getting his balance, flat on his back again. Dave grinned at us a moment longer, then laughed and shook the sand off his body, head to toe, like a young animal.

     We caught up with them and ran the rest of the way in their wake, risking shins and ankles, bounding over hummocks of grass. As the ground flattened out near the high banks of sand which hid the sea I noticed Philippe “helping” Joanne across the stream that breached them. He hadn’t a chance. There was always some boy hanging around her. Bees around a honey-pot. She appeared to be indifferent to her circling admirers − but not completely. This drove them to flights of showing off, flattery and attentiveness. She seemed to hint that she had something that they shouldn’t do without. I never saw her give much herself. She withheld, somehow, as though the need were all on their side and everything on offer was hers whenever she might choose to take it. Joanne had no doubt of her own attractiveness. None whatsoever. How had she learned that?

     Luc had slowed down and was looking at the ground as he walked. I watched him and he looked up. He smiled. I felt recognised and suddenly timid so that by the time I smiled back he was looking down again. He was nice. His English was a bit hesitant or else he’d have said something, I was sure. I wished the others weren’t there. We could have been by ourselves, just walking.

He stopped and picked up some pebbles from the stream. “I like these stones. They are pretty.” I agreed. He held them up to the light but it was him I was watching. “I have one I found,” he said. He pulled out several pebbles from his pocket, picked one out and returned the rest. On his palm lay a lozenge-shaped stone.

     “But you didn’t find that here,” I said. “It’s polished.”

     He smiled. “I do this at home. I have a small machine. Souvenirs. This is my favourite of all and I always have it.” The stone was a pale, glassy green. He handed it to me. “I say it is impossible but it resembles to hair.”

     Inside the stone was something delicately branchy, just like very fine hair, or seaweed that looks like hair as it floats in on the sea. I could see myself walking with Luc early in the morning, with the sun gleaming on wet sand. “It’s lovely,” I said. I offered it back to him but he shook his head and gave one of those little shruggy-smiley pouts that the French do and said, “For you.” I couldn’t think what to say. The little miracle was light in my palm.

     We emerged from the dunes near one end of the beach. At the far end, ramparts of black rock cut short the broad sweep of sand. The sun had all but gone down. Only a thread of intense light defined the horizon. The flat sea rippled towards us as we approached it in silence. Little waves expired gently into froth. It was just like the poetry we read in class:

               “And candle-like foam on the dim sand

               Live but to light your passing feet.”

     I didn’t recite this aloud. I didn’t know exactly what it meant but it fitted the moment – the still, airy-grey light and Luc. Was it the sort of thing he might say? It was lovely, chivalrous.

     Someone came running, feet splashing. “Hi! Look!” Dave flicked a stone across the water, and another. “Go on! Try!” He had shaggy hair and his smile was sudden and fierce, like a dog baring its teeth in play and he was very close to me. Luc moved away. Dave thrust some stones at me and I couldn’t think of an excuse not to chuck a few into the water, but I saw that Luc had gone towards the far end of the beach. Would I go after him?

     The stone-skimming had turned competitive, with the others joining in. Dave talked and talked and I felt obscurely that it was my attention he was seeking in particular. But why should he have it? There was something too much about him that made me want to resist him. “That’s right, isn’t it?” he demanded of me at last. “Isn’t it?”

     “What?” I said vaguely. Luc was a small figure at the end of the bay. Just on the edge of my vision I could see Dave grinding a shell into the sand under his foot, scowling. Too bad.

     “Look what the wind blew in!” shouted Kevin. He had picked up a long, rope of seaweed, wrist-thick, blue-black and glistening, festooned with bulbous pods and streamers of slime, each spiralling flange as broad as a hand. It was pre-historic, like something enticed up from the depths. My skin shifted.  My shape-in-the-world shuddered, asserting itself − its borders − in instant opposition to this alien thing that had slithered, unasked, among us. Horrible to think of it lurking down there, wrapping itself round your legs, mindlessly.

     Dave went up to Kevin. “Gimme it,” he demanded.

     “Sure,” said Kevin, dancing out of reach.

     Dave grabbed, missed and had to chase Kevin before capturing it. He wound one end of it about his hand and swung it around. “Tig!” he announced. The small group scattered, laughing and shrieking. He chased one, then another. He paused and looked about and then turned decisively towards me. He gripped the seaweed hard and made straight for me, yelling. I froze for a second, surprised at his determination but then I ran, though not too hard because I expected him to catch up with me soon and veer off elsewhere. When he didn’t, I assumed he’d already turned to someone else and I glanced round, sure that he’d be half-way across the beach in the opposite direction. But no, he had stopped a short distance away. We looked at each other until I felt fear rise in me − a mixture of vague apprehension and certainty.

     He took a step towards me. I heard the others laughing. They thought I was frightened of the seaweed. For a moment, I told myself it wasn’t serious but − my body fled. I heard him shout behind me, exultantly. I ran into the sea but his feet crashed through the foam, then thudded on firm sand. We ran further and further away from the others. He was almost upon me. I would go down! I wheeled round desperately. He dodged across my track. I sensed myself hissing at him and I threw myself past him. There was Luc! I grabbed at him, swinging him round between me and Dave, willing him to save me. But he only looked slightly surprised and amused. I thrust him away from me and gave up, gasping for breath.

     Dave crouched, panting. He stood and his breathing slowed as he came nearer. His teeth were clenched as he grinned at me. He stopped, tossed the hair from his eyes and took one deep breath, straightening his back. He would make me feel it. The seaweed was humped in his hands. He placed himself before me. Close. As close as kissing. I felt my neck enveloped in tongues of fleshy weed. Its sacs bobbed against my limbs. He smiled. Luc, friendly-looking as ever, watched the sea.

     Rage took over. Rage against both of them. Rage against myself. Was this what was behind it all, behind words and gestures and gifts – this slathering, arrogant, inevitably mastering demand? This humiliation was desirable? The disgusting stuff lapped around my throat. I unwound it, taking my time. I gathered it in my arms, twisted it in my fingers. I hugged it, letting it stain and drench me. I looked at Dave. I looked at him with contempt as cold as I could make it and I walked away.

     That would have been a fine ending. I did walk away. I even pushed my face into the seaweed, getting its smell to make sure I would know it, next time. But eventually I had to ditch it, didn’t I, in the sand. I had to wash and go to bed.

     On my own, burning, I saw how Luc’s stone had seaweed deep inside it. “They will never catch me again.” I swore it.

All those years ago.