The Sand Dog. Sarah Lean

      I NEVER THOUGHT GRANDFATHER would come back on an ordinary day like a Monday or a Tuesday. He’d come on the kind of day when the rising sun is pouring its colours on the sea because there’s not enough room for all its glory in the sky. Grandfather was like that kind of special day to me too. He was a fisherman, and from watching the drift of deep-water seaweed he could land a net of fish full to bursting. He knew the journey of a past storm by what swept up on the beach, and could tell a thousand stories of extraordinary creatures from the deep. He said that the ocean had a long story to tell about all of us, full of signs of things that have happened and signs of things that are to come. I always knew he’d come back across the sea, triumphing over a few monsters on the way, but I was still waiting after two years for that special day to arrive.

      I live on a small island in the Mediterranean. My home used to be with Grandfather in a little fisherman’s cottage but now I’m in a flat with Uncle above his restaurant at the back of the beach. My open bedroom window is like an ear to the sounds of the water, and it was one Friday night that I heard the rhythm of the tide change.

      In my underpants, I went downstairs and walked across the beach to look out over the waves. The sea was black as simmering tar, and the moon reflected like broken glass on the restless waves. At the far end of the beach on the shallow rocks that divided the