[i] 

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There must be a point, in the middle of the bay, where every peak in the county is visible. Such a complete thought to have at eight. It lodged there, pinned to the roof of her mind by a tongue that never said it aloud. On the lane by the railway tracks, on the shore by the beached boats, on the dunes; for decades the first glimpse of the estuary waters conjures up that possibility, carrying it in on the tug of each tide. Out there, in a place she never stood, she can see it all.

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[ii] 

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An attic holds a world in miniature, in the unsuspecting rafters of a mid-terrace roof. Her grandad can still make the precarious climb up the ladder and into the centre of this railway town. She clambers up first, the net of his arms behind her. She stands eye level with this intricate imitation of an outside. Model trains churn around them. A yellow engine pulls carriages of coal, weaving under a bridge and along the perimeter of a village, through a forest of plastic pines. Turning, she watches every second of its path, knows exactly where it will go.

 

 

[iii] 

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The shell says nothing. She holds it again to her ear, waiting for the fuzzy sound of the sea that should be there. That’s the wrong type, her mother says. Here, let’s look for a better one. She looks at the shell in her hand, a flat oval of blacks, blues and shimmering whites. A mussel shell, she would later learn. How could a shell be wrong? Don’t worry, she tells it, I can talk instead. This is her favourite model train, this is her bookbag, this is how her mother answers the phone, this is a dream. 

 

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[iv] 

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She collects puzzles, records riddles in the last pages of her maths book, draws out the optical illusions in wobbling ink from the magazine her sister got last Christmas. Often she finds herself stood within them. Here, at the dunes, is another. The grasses crest waves of sand, their roots freezing the grains and mud into place. She can imagine a foot crushing down from above or a tiny figure climbing their way up. The scale refuses to stick. Without a person in sight, they swing freely between miniature and mountainous. 

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[v] 

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Fingers pull into grass and soft mud; clinging, grappling for purchase. Mists of rain are making the surface slicker each second. Her sister towers at the top of the bank, clutching her chest in laughter, the three years between them stretched out into the landscape. With each slipping second she’s pulled between tears and laughter too. Just below her mucky blue trainers is a stream of stagnant water, leftovers from the last high tide. She scrambles again, cartoon legs running on the spot, closer to the water now. Her sister kneels, still laughing, and offers her hand.

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[vi] 

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It puckers the sand into a small pierced hole as it burrows.  She lies on her belly, head on folded arms, and tells it everything it should know. She’s talking the ear off that poor clam, her mother laughs. Her sister, stacking stones, says that clams don’t have ears. In reply she digs her toes and her fingers into the damp sand, burrowing too, talking on. This is her friend, this is a fear, this is hidden on her bookcase, this is a film she watched yesterday after school. Why wouldn’t she tell a clam?

 

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[vii] 

What is closest to the end at the very start? This is her own riddle; she attempts to weave it into one like the puzzles in the book open in her lap. Those phrases fascinate her; sentences that tug apart to reveal sleepless beds are rivers and eggs are treasure chests. She picks at her own. Here sits the answer; her in a scratching jumper, steaming up a car that circles the bay. Her mother, in orbit with her, notches the wipers against the winter rain. Everything feels so far away.

 

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[viii] 

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The ceiling is a deep blue. Pale light paints the gaps of her curtains. She awoke and her dream followed on her heels; now she lies silent in her bed, keen not to spook it away.  The debris of secondary school is beached around her, slate made of textbooks and branches of hockey sticks. The shelf above the headboard is lined with shells from the bay. They are speaking to her, they are telling her things: this is the sand as the tide comes in, this is a gull, this is a tunnel. 

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[ix] 

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She walks with her friends in the dunes. They are searching out the hollows, going room to room; where are the rest? Through a valley in the sand she spots a crackle of light. They follow its beacon, along a ridge and then down the soft bank to their friends held in the crater. They gather in, five linked together with stories and secrets. Beneath their voices she can hear another. This is the column of a wind turbine reaching down to the sea floor, this is a boat that sank; the bay has things to tell her.

 

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[x] 

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I feel like you’re going to sacrifice me to something. They are lying in bed, only girlfriends for now, the early years. She rolls on her side, looking at Liv. I have literally no idea what that means, she laughs. It’s when I stay here, Liv replies, with all your shells and stones on every surface. I moved that sharp one, and you immediately returned it to the same spot; that’s when it started feeling ritualistic. They descend to teasing, laughing in knotted sheets. The bay in its fragments is arranged around them, she begs it to stay quiet. 

 

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[xi] 

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The path is pressed in by the water which divides Walney from Barrow on one side and an overgrown tumble of brambles and rubbish rising on the other, a road flashing past behind. She walks, hands in pockets. The sky is metal and the air bites, reddens. The corrugations of the warehouses, birthing submarines, tower from the opposite bank. This is a buoy beached on the shore. These are the ribcages of rotting boats, excavated by the tide. She looks, on some are the remains of planks, ropes leading on to nothing, nets tangled with seaweed, painted names flaking to obscurity. The Tyrant, The Galway Girl, The Noreen Fury. 

 

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[xii] 

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The pages stick, skipping from eleven to fifteen. She picks at the corner, her nail just long enough to slip between and tease them apart. Eleven: an interview, a local musician, fundraising. Twelve: a ninetieth birthday, celebrated at the rugby club, hundreds attend. Thirteen, fourteen: a spread of a concert in the ruined abbey, a girl gazing at a singer in medieval robes. Fifteen: talks on the bridge stalling, grinding out of gear, a rendered image conjuring an unreal structure that’s always out from reach. A billion-pound-bridge can’t be built if there’s not enough value on the other side, sighs the spokesperson. 

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[xiii] 

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Where to go from here? They stand on the ridge of a dune in North Walney. Fells blacken before them, clouds sucking in for a storm. She can see across estuaries and towns, the view of a dream from so long ago. Let’s go back along the beach to save time, Liv says. The long grasses snap, electric, bent flat before rising once again. This is a stone pulled from the depths, the bay says. This is a hawthorn, its shape a record of the wind. This is the storm reaching land.

 

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[xiv] 

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On the shore the ink specks of people gather and part, clustering around the benches and in a queue for the ice cream van. She is standing as far out as the wet sand will allow, her back to the sea. We’re taking the girls for a treat, her sister shouts again, before turning to catch up with two small children tied under sun hats. Lingering, toes burrowed in sand, she is reluctant to follow. This is the bridge, the bay had said. She turns back to the water. There is the line of the horizon, where the sea meets the sky. Where is the bridge? 

 

 

[xv] 

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Opening the door of the car takes a heavy push. The wind battering in off the bay is unobstructed. Her wife climbs out the passenger side, struggles to pull hair under a hat. A picnic lies pathetic in the backseat. Before them would have been a flat plain of grasses before the water, rivulets splintering through like cracks in glass. They are a decade too late. This playful ground of ditches and banks to jump, to scramble, has eroded to the retaining wall. She says she is sorry three times; she thought it was still here. 

 

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[xvi] 

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The radio fills the car. She drives through the dark, hugging the curve of the estuary, the dashboard a constellation. A trickle of messages from Liv burst into her phone. They can wait; she’s only ten minutes away now. This is the bridge, it says, under the noise. The bay is so certain of the bridge, that it’s out there in the darkness, a thin line of connection spanning the vast estuary. This is the sea, rushing through the turbines, flooding in. This is the town, glowing, lit from its power. She tries to stop listening. 

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[xvii] 

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Post is on the table, Liv calls from the kitchen as she arrives home. The stack of letters waits on one precarious leaf of a dark-stained folding table; a relic of their first home together, kept these ten years. She shuffles through until a blue envelope is at the top, soft as sky, scrawled with loops of loose handwriting. Settling at the table, she savours opening it. Inside is a neat square clipping of a finished crossword. She flips to the reverse, to writing just legible over the text of an article. Loved the theme of this one kid, you were testing my knowledge of sea birds there. Look forward to next week’s, grandad.

 

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[xviii] 

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Noise encases her, a shell of sound, something protective and restricting. Halfway through her playlist, she’s heard every song so often they’re smooth, lost of meaning. She pulls her headphones off as she sits in the car. There is a second, just a second, before her phone connects and the music returns on the car speakers. In that between-moment she hears it; the bay is continuous now, shouting without raising its voice. Please, please, she pleads back. Find someone else. Pulling away, she turns to join the traffic in its slow crawl out of the town.

 

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[xix] 

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The pink sandstone of the abbey appears to be braced by rusted metal scaffolds. The beams linger on from work to the foundations, carried out years ago, patiently waiting for the funds to be removed. She stands within towering walls; centuries rise and fall. She crosses stone thresholds softened with footfall. The present feels so unsubstantial here. She pictures their own doorway vacant, leading onto a void. Through the empty panes of a window her wife appears, pausing to look at the tower.  What will remain of the sites of their lives? 

 

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[xx]

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Morning light washes across the scores and grains of the table top, turning it into a landscape. Her wife sits opposite, coffee held in one hand, listening. A shell rests between them. This is a heron, this is a channel forming, this is the tide coursing in between pillars. She repeats its whispers for Liv to hear, an echo a second behind. This is a submarine, waiting. These are the cars on the bridge. This is a girl, talking to the shells. This is a murmuration of the starlings, brushing the surface of the sea. Should we say something back, Liv asks, or do we just need to listen?