Part I

I - The Station

A cocktail of sea mist, fresh hot doughnuts and smouldering coal saturated the air. The locomotive—all brazen scarlet with its polished highlights and trimmings; tendrilling steam spewing forth from the chimney—came to a well-deserved halt, like an aged and rotund, golden-buttoned royal guardsman, resting with his feet up and smoking a fragrant, just-as-fat cigar.
“Hawfare Beach! This stop is Hawfare Beach!” bellowed the conductor with a booming authority.
And stepping off from the freshly arrived engine, a spritely little boy of six years, clutching a shiny plastic yellow spade in his one hand, and a bright blue, castle-shaped bucket in his other. Blue was his favourite colour so of course his bucket would follow suit. He wielded these as if he was preparing to wage war upon the enemy’s shoreline. He was feral for the beach.
“Stay close by me now, Milo—Milo!” With an urgent splutter, the boy’s father, Miles, alerted to the dungarees-clad child whilst gripping firm his small wrist with the same energy as Milo for his bucket and spade. Miles often fussed over the fervency of his son as a panicked chef would from an over-excitable chip pan fire.
“Oh let him be. You were as ferocious when you were his age—if not more so,” softly chuckled Mildred, Miles’ mother, as she patted thrice his airy, beige nylon-shirted shoulder.
“I know, I just—I want today to be perfect for him,” huffed Miles perturbedly.
“It already is,” Mildred reassured with a familiar and comforting mien.
She was a woman of very few words—she relied on her warm...