stick and stone.docVIP

Sticks and Stones by Trezza Azzopardi He races to the top of the dune and looks down onto the strand. There is water and wet sand and dry sand and small pokes of sharp grass dotted along the beach. He stands on the lip of the concrete defence; looks east, to the line of groynes, then west, to the lighthouse in the distance. Theres no one he can see, no one he can call to for help. Below him, the drop onto the beach is fifteen, maybe twenty, feet. He jumps because he has to, jumps out into the air, and sees as he falls one more thing; a cloud of white birds hanging on the skyline. There is a hot taste filling his mouth, like molten iron, and a black pain, and the knowledge that his teeth are through his lip. Its always this same dream that Lewis has, and he does the same thing when he wakes; he reaches up to feel the place where his bottom lip was opened, running a finger over his chin. He has a scar there still, almost imperceptible to the casual eye, like a ghost mouth that never opens, like a horizon. It has been fifteen years since he jumped and fell, and he has never been back to the beach. He has spent his adult life in the heart of England, at the very core of the city, as if putting himself in the dense centre of a world would protect him from another fall off the edge of it. But now he has returned to his mothers house, and the dream is more vivid here, in colour, with sound effects and rising panic, as if it too has finally come home. “Theres a letter for you”, his mother shouts, hearing his footsteps on the stairs, “Ive put it on the table.” She says no more, but Lewis can hear excitement in her voice, as if letters are the rarest of things. Hes been here a month now, and has spoken to no one, apart from his mother, has had no phone calls, certainly no letters, nothing at all from Anna. He pictures her, lying in their bed, her face shocked and tearful, just as the morning he left her. He takes his mother tea, and finds her sitting at the back of the h