Once, Baxter and I fucked in the scoop of a broken boat, its wooden sides yellow and ravaged like an old banana. No, that’s not right. Baxter fucked me. He always fucked me. Sex wasn’t something we did together. He would act as if he were inflicting it on me and I’d let him because that’s how we rolled. That night with Baxter was our first time at the beach. The moon was low and large, silvering the sea, and the tide was high. Waves crashed on the shore, shingle clattering in the drag. You could make out the whirs and squeals of the funfair near the west beach, a jangle of music seeping into the dark, the rides’ gaudy lights spinning, flashing and swooping by the disused pier. In contrast, the east beach around us was apocalyptically still, a halted world of rusting winches, mouldering shacks, abandoned lobster pots, rotting rope and scattered, dead boats. The old net houses, tall, gaunt sheds with steep roofs and tar-black, weatherboarded walls, loomed over the wreckage like a creepy, elongated town in a fairy tale.
