1976.

Poulshone, County Wexford; Ireland‘s sunny south east. Usually that’s a comparative term and somewhat misleading but not this year – the hottest summer anyone can remember.

The hottest since ’47 in fact.

I’m sitting on a patch of beachgrass and shading my eyes as I look across a dune at the little house with the cool-tiled, sand-strewn floor. That’s where I need to get. It is Aisling’s house, or Samantha’s or whatever her name was.

Dad is still alive.

The arc of sky above me is polarised by memory; an impossibly deep, dark blue – the expanses of sand below it a blinding white. Seurat style dots of other colour in the distance; tiny swimsuits wavering in the heat where sand sinks beneath water. Buckets, spades, armbands and inflatables; orange, pink, yellow – shark shapes and crumbling castles.

An ice cream afternoon. More