Jenny Downham Before I Die

Twenty-two

Four twenty and the sea is grey. So is the sky, although the sky is slightly lighter and not moving so fast. The sea makes me dizzy – something about the never-ending movement and how no one could stop it even if they wanted to.

‘It’s crazy being here,’ Zoey says. ‘How did I let you persuade me?’

We’re sitting on a bench on the sea front. The place is practically deserted. Far away across the sand a dog barks at the waves. Its owner is the tiniest dot on the horizon.

‘I used to come here on holiday every summer,’ I tell her. ‘Before Mum left. Before I got sick. We used to stay at the Crosskeys Hotel. Every morning we’d get up, have breakfast and spend the day on the beach. Every single day for two weeks.’

‘Fun, fun, fun!’ Zoey says, and she slumps down on the bench and pulls her coat closer across her chest.

‘We didn’t even go up to the hotel for lunch. Dad made sandwiches, and we’d buy packets of Angel Delight for pudding. He’d mix it with milk on the beach in a Tupperware dish. The sound of the fork whisking against a bowl was so weird amongst the noise of the seagulls and the waves.’

Zoey looks at me long and hard. ‘Did you forget to take some kind of important medication today?’

‘No!’ I grab her arm, pull her up. ‘Come on, I’ll show you the hotel we used to stay in.’

We walk along the promenade. Below us, the sand is covered in cuttlefish. They’re heavy and scarred as if they’ve been flung against each other with every tide. I make a joke about picking them up and selling them to a pet shop for the budgies, but really it’s strange. I don’t remember that happening when I used to come here.

‘Maybe it’s an autumn thing,’ Zoey says. ‘Or pollution. The whole crazy planet’s dying. You should think yourself lucky you’re getting out of here.’

Zoey says she needs to pee, and she goes down the steps onto the beach and crouches there. I can’t quite believe she’s doing this. There’s hardly anyone about, but usually she’d really care about somebody seeing her. Her pee gushes a hole in the sand and disappears, steaming. She looks very primeval as she hitches herself up and makes her way back to me.

We stand for a bit looking at the sea together. It rushes, whitens, retreats.

‘I’m glad you’re my friend, Zoey,’ I say, and I take her hand in mine and hold it tight.

We walk along to the harbour. I almost tell her about Adam and the motorbike ride and what happened on the hill, but it feels too difficult, and really I don’t want to talk about it. I get lost in remembering this place instead. Everything’s so familiar – the souvenir hut with its buckets and spades and racks of postcards, the whitewashed walls of the ice-cream parlour and the giant pink cone glinting outside. I’m even able to find the alley near the harbour that’s a short cut through to the hotel.

‘It looks different,’ I tell her. ‘It used to be bigger.’

‘But it’s the right place?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Great, so can we go back to the car now?’

I open the gate, walk up the little path. ‘I wonder if they’ll let me look at the room we used to stay in.’

‘Christ!’ mutters Zoey, and she plonks herself on the wall to wait.

A middle-aged woman opens the door. She looks kind and fat and is wearing an apron. I don’t remember her. ‘Yes?’

I tell her that I used to come here as a child, that we had the family room every summer for two weeks.

‘And are you looking for a room for tonight?’ she asks.