Auntie Kate had buried him in sand on their day out... it had looked all hot and golden but it was lovely and cold and muddy underneath... she had buried him in it up to his burning robust little red neck, which his mum had told him was her 'little choice cut' when she dried him after his Wednesday bath.

Auntie Kate had buried him in the sand with a blue spade, and it worried him a bit that he could still see his toes wriggling if he wanted them to when, for the first time in his life his head and the haircut his Auntie Jan had marched in and given him because she claimed he was 'lousy', were in two separate places entirely .

Declan was worried that his toes did not belong to him, that the curly pink widgets at the other end of the mound were pretenders.

'Nice' was a word his teacher Miss James said was overused and meaningless...

Declan felt disloyal in thinking that it did indeed feel nice here, but it would have been nicer if they hadn't all laughed and run away to do something that he couldn't see and come running back laughing again...

He'd thought it would be a lot more fun than it was now...

Like when Auntie Kate had married Uncle Chris last year and the grown-ups had fussed around him so much, tucking his big shirt in and making him feel like six, not five...

The grown-ups only wanted to see the sunset on the beach and have a laugh they say crossly, in the car going home...

Declan knows they're angry with him because he's crying, but Auntie Kate is crying too and holding him close under her coat...

But he doesn't know why.