A seaside holiday: caravan park, long walks and sandcastles. He sat in a deck-chair, trying to read. Cold mind blowing, despite the sun. Rhona rubbed suntan lotion on Sammy, said you couldn't be too careful. Told him to keep an eye open, she was going back to the caravan for her book. Sammy was burying her father's feet in the sand.

He was trying to read, but thinking about work. Every day of the holiday, he sneaked off to a phone-box and called the station. They kept telling him to go and enjoy himself, forget about everything. He was halfway through a spy thriller. The plot had already lost him.

Rhona was doing her best. She'd wanted somewhere foreign, a bit of glamour and heat to go with the sunshine. Finances, however, mere on his side. So here they mere on the Fife coast, where he'd first met her. Was he hoping for something? Some memory rekindled? He'd come here with his own parents, played with Mickey, met other kids, then lost them again at the end of the fortnight.

He tried the spy novel again, but case-work got in the may. And then a shadow fell over him.

`Where is she?’

`What?’ He looked down. His feet mere buried in sand, but Sammy wasn't there. How long had she been gone? He stood up, scanned the seashore. A few tentative bathers, going in no further than their knees.

`Christ, John, where is she?’

He turned round, looked at the sand dunes in the distance.

`The dunes…?’

They warned her. There mere hollows in the dunes where the sand was eroding. Small dens had been created – a magnet for kids. Only they were prone to collapse. Earlier in the season, a ten-year-old boy had been dug out by frantic parents. He hadn't quite choked on the sand…

They were running now. The dunes, the grass, no sign of her.

'Sammy!' `Maybe she went into the water.’

`You mere supposed to be keeping an eye on her!'

`I'm sorry. I…’

`Sammy!' A small shape in one of the dens. Hopping on its hands and knees. Rhona reached in, pulled her out, hugged her.