I WONDERED if somehow I had managed to SUMMON HIM

My face broke into a wide smile as the boy who used to be my best friend stood next to me and I looked up at his handsome features.

Only he wasn’t a boy any more. Far from it. He’d grown into an attractive man the way I never realised he would.

I resisted the urge to wrap my arms around him, as he had done to me the last time we’d stood on this patch of sand, all those years ago. Instead, I simply replied, “Find any what?”

“Fossils.” He gestured to the pebbles around us. “Mind if I join you?”

He waited for me to nod before he sat, cross-legged c on the beach next to me. I hadn’t h realised how cold it was until I fe elt the warmth of his body drifting to owards mine.

My breathing slowed. He’d always had h a calming effect upon me. Often he hadn’t h even needed to say anything.

It t was just him, his presence. I missed precious, prehistoric finds. “Not at this time of day.”

“Yeah.” He laughed.

“You’re probably right.”

We watched the horizon as the sun inched its way lower. The shops had long since closed but I’d learned since childhood that if I wanted to find fossils here, I had to search on a falling tide. Otherwise the beachcombers and gift shopkeepers got to them all, cleaned them and presented them for sale at the front of their shops.

I’d purposefully, stubbornly refused to look hard for something that should have been easy to find. It was only one of my many failings, I was sure. The trick had always been to look at the area near the cliff face, and between tide and waterline, for any fresh, slight debris that might house an ammonite or something similar. I’d lived here until I was in my twenties, but even back then I’d never really paid