In my peripheral vision someone sits on the bench next to me. She pulls out a sketchpad and starts drawing. We share a mutual silence for a few minutes. It hangs heavy like lead. Something tugs me into speaking.
​
‘You’d better hurry up, I don’t think it’ll be here for much longer.’
​
It’s a satisfying fact that the sun sets with a year-round consistency here. Not like at home with mind numbing winters and summer nights so bright that you can’t sleep.
​
‘It’s overrated anyway.’
‘I don’t know if you’re aware of this…’
‘What?’
‘Your accent, you’re a non-rhotic speaker. So, where I’m from, we make the ‘R’ sound after the vowel. You lot don’t. It’s because back in the day, the settlers used to get paid in rum. Therefore, they were drunk all the time and could never pronounce their words properly.’
‘That’s nonsense. You’re not from here?’
‘Nope.’
I dig in my pocket for my tattered passport that looks as though it’s been through the washing machine several times.
‘See this.’ I hold it up, lifting my chin in an air of mock pompousness. ‘This grants me impunity anywhere.’
‘You’re English?’
‘No.’
‘Okay Walter Mitty.’ We talk for what feels like a long time.
‘It’s getting dark, I’m going to go to a bar up the road there,’ I propose.
‘I have to go soon.’ A few minutes later she begins to leave.
‘It was nice meeting you, good luck,’ she says as she stands up and walks away.
‘Nice meeting you.’
​
The odd bat is now visible, beating its wings. The number of people left on the beach has decayed and as they head home their voices become muffled over distance, as if I’m underwater.
​
On the bus home I conjure up a treasure map in my mind. The map is a reddish-brown, sepia colour and the diagram in the middle depicts an island. The perimeter of the island is intricate like the shoreline here, or the inlets of the coast back home, but unlike a map of home, there are no satellite islands. It exists alone. It is complete in its entirety, inside an impenetrable, solipsistic universe.