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noise, save the sound of the sea, stopped and Martin felt the dinghy rock as Nigel turned round, felt the older boy’s body close to him.
    They crouched, one behind the other, gaping towards the shore squinting through the swirling mist.
    Nigel’s mouth dropped open, his eyes widened. Panic surged up into his chest, gripping his throat. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t move except to reach out towards Martin and grip the young boy’s arm and stare helplessly, at the mist all around them enclosing them in a circle of seawater.
    In the top flat, Joe Milner, step-father of the two boys, snorted in his sleep and then, as if the sound had disturbed him, he opened his eyes. He yawned noisily, stretched and glanced at his wife lying beside him. She was on her back, her open mouth without its false teeth shrunken and falling inwards, making her look older than her thirty-seven years. Her black hair, frizzed with frequent perming, was already liberally speckled with grey. Her face had become tanned this last week, whilst he, with fairer colouring, had burnt and blistered, a layer of skin peeling like tissue paper from his shoulders. Gingerly he touched his nose which was still sore. He heaved himself out of bed and hitched up his pyjama trousers. He wore no jacket, only a vest. He had reached the end of the bed on his way to the bathroom down the landing, when the dull thud in his head and a funny weakness in his legs reminded him of the gallon and a half of bitter he had drunk the previous night. He belched loudly and fell across the end of the bed landing heavily on his wife’s feet.
    Blanche—had there ever been anyone so misnamed?—woke up swearing. ‘What the bloody ’ell …? Ugh—I might ’ave known!’ She drew her knees up out of his way and turned herself on to her side. ‘Noisy bugger!’ she whistled through her flabby mouth and closed her eyes again.
    It wasn’t until twenty past eleven that they first missed the boys, but even then they knew of no reason to worry. Every morning of the holiday the boys had played quite safely on the beach until their parents had surfaced around eleven or later.
    So why should this morning—the last day of their holiday—be any different?
    Bleary-eyed and wobbly, Blanche Milner began to stuff her clothes into a suitcase. Breakfast was a cigarette and a cup of instant coffee—if Joe could be nagged into putting the kettle on.
    â€˜Where’s them little buggers got to? Don’t they know the train goes at one?’
    Joe sniffed and coughed juicily. ‘They’ll be on t’beach.’
    â€˜ ’Course they’ll be on t’beach. I know that,’ she shrilled scornfully. ‘But I wants ’em ’ere packing, not playin’, not this morning. Go’n look for ’em, Joe.’
    He made a token resistance, not moving until she shrieked warningly, ‘ Joe , you hear me?’
    He flopped down the three flights of stairs and out of the rear entrance into the back yard. Four cars belonging to other occupants of the flats had been squeezed into the square. To the left, against a brick wall was a sort of lean-to where beach gear—deck-chairs, buckets and spades, balls and various objects—could be left instead of being carted all the way up the stairs to the flats.
    Joe Milner stopped. In the middle of all the clutter was an open space where their dinghy should have been. But the black and orange inflatable was not there.
    â€˜The little …!’ he began, but strangely he was not given to swearing as frequently and volubly as his wife, and he contented himself with planning the various punishments he would inflict upon the disobedient boys when he caught up with them.
    He shambled through the alley dividing their block of holiday flats from the next in the row which ran the full length of the Marine Esplanade overlooking the foreshore gardens, the putting-greens, the