Close by, a dark sea shifted but way out in out in the bay thrashing white waves promised a high tide to follow later on.

A biting wind chapped Megan’s cheeks adding redness to a pale face but oblivious to needles of sand pricking her skin, she scanned black-humped rocks, wide rippled mounds of grey pebbles and limpid pools where seaweed swayed an invitation to search beneath their brown rubbery skirts.

A sudden jarring of squawks lifted her gaze to where gulls battled with crows above a lopsided shelter. It perched on top of hardened scree and she remembered past summers when they’d kissed under the heat of its tin roof and winter nights when rain hammered a tattoo above their heads, cold steaming their warm breaths.

She recalled languid afternoons lying on their backs, their toes touching. David laughing at her small feet and she,teasing him about his size twelve’s, calling them flippers with him responding that they’d be useful as paddles if ever his small fishing boat ran aground on treacherous rocks out to sea.

‘Local Man Lost,’ the headline declared last week in the Gazette.

Dropping her gaze she moved on, scanning the sand, seeing a child’s broken red bucket, a faded yellow deckchair, its arm raised at a broken angle. Then she saw the green Wellington boot.

Hurrying forward, she picked it up, emptying its contents of water and, for a long moment, she turned it over and over before putting it down on the sand, placing her right foot beside it and compared its length to her own.

Picking it up again, she tucked it under her arm and as she walked on, continuing her solitary search,the silent bay seemed to echo her own suffocating grief and despair.