by Morgan Melhuish
“Anna?”
He knows who I am, has picked me out at a glance. To be fair, there’s not many of us stepping from the bus and onto the promenade of the bay.
“Hi.” Embarrassed, I attempt a smile, the silence between us even more awkward.
Have I made a mistake in doing this, washing up here again?
“Next year we’re getting an electric fleet,” Jet cocks his head in the direction of the departing bus, grumbling away from the curb.
It’s not what I expect. The first words I’m having, in person, with him. My…almost brother? Connected by a possibility. Is that what we are?
It’s complex. Families are.
In the flesh Jet’s a little more masculine, but still recognizable from his messenger picture: blonde ram-curls with one red-dyed streak, a nose stud and greasy skin.
I look out at the curve of the bay, the slither of sand peppered with stone, the dark rolling waves on their way in, foaming with spume. I shiver, at the stiff sea breeze after the bus’s protection, at the worry I’ve made the wrong choice, the chill of the past catching up with me.
“Thanks for coming Anna. It’ll mean the world to him.”
I turn back to Jet.
Even though I’m older I don’t have the words for this situation. He’s muddling through for the both of us. Say something Anna, I berate myself.
“Do you like it here?”
He looks around, as if only just noticing what’s beyond his shaggy fringe.
“Yeah,” he’s sheepish. “Better than where I was, bouncing around, y’know.”
I nod. I absolutely do- slumming it with mates, caught up in care.…
“And Roger’s the best. So supportive, but you know him.”
My guts twist.
“You remember the way?” Jet asks. “I can’t imagine much has changed.”
I shoulder my rucksack with a hefty swing and begin the climb to Roger’s and into the past.
How many times had I trudged up this hill, coming back from school, skin tight with salt after a sea swim, gossiping and laughing with Tara?
Jet’s right, in over a decade the differences are minor.
The four years I had here begin to surface from the depths, released by the shifting sands of memory.
The bungalow looks smaller, but I suppose actually I’ve grown. It’s definitely more weather-beaten, the tiled roof scarred with yellow lichens.
I smile at the magnolia in the front garden, its white buds delicately shaded pink. Around the base of the trunk and sprawling out in every direction, like a root system, is the crazy collection of flotsam we scavenged. Just as with a cairn in the mountains, I added sea glass and pretty pebbles, anything that washed into the bay that caught my eye: plastic ducks which no longer squeaked, Lego blocks, shattered frisbees, twisted driftwood, coconuts. We made a sculpture, valuing the unwanted. Roger was always good at that.
I see a chewed surfboard has been added, a tombstone of fiberglass.
“Oh, ummm, just one thing, before we go in…” Jet can’t meet my gaze, awkwardly rubs the back of his neck. “Dad, err, doesn’t actually know you’re coming.”
Dad.
The simplicity of the word stings, with all the weight it brings. He had been that for me too, for a while. Could have been…
I swallow back the tightness, thrown by three letters more than Jet’s admission.
I just unlatch the wrought iron gate and keep moving. Jet hurries forwards and fumbles with a mass of novelty key rings, ushering me in.
I automatically kick off my shoes in the porch, step into the hallway of the bungalow I used to call home. I can’t help but recall my first time here, trying not to show how upset I was, intently focusing on the radiator, angry with the situation: my disappointment of a mother, the ineffectual social worker…. It unsettles me how small I feel now, how young.
What is the power of these places, of memory, to drag you back, like the undertow of currents on a beach?
Just like back then, I take small steps, unsure if I will take flight, entering his world.
In no distance at all I’m in the kitchen, face to face with Roger. My foster father.
Ever since Jet asked me here, I’ve thought of this moment. The way it might play out, the emotion.
I find only pity and sorrow.
I remember Roger, his fingers stained a dirty orange from tobacco, his close-cropped hair and gnomic beard. He was half-hippy, half prog rock guitarist, fame long faded.
“Anna?”
Now his voice is sandpaper, as if the tones I know have been scratched away. The rest of him looks worn too, eroded as cliffs. This is not just the ravages of time, I realize in an instant.
“Oh my darling, Anna.” He shuffles across the kitchen floor, arms outstretched, and I let myself be embraced. There has always been warmth in his arms. Years flow, this way and that, past and present colliding in a hug. He feels so frail, bones wrapped in papery skin.
Roger beholds me, a broad rictus grin on his face. “Look how you’ve grown!”
Then he stares over my shoulder to Jet. “Is this your doing?” Roger’s voice scratches sharp, but I know he’s not angry.
The lad smiles sheepishly, ram-curls bobbing.
Tea comes first and then the tears. Roger’s calm; there is resignation in the repetition of facts.
Cancer. Lungs and spreading. Of course it is, to alter him so. To provoke the cloak and dagger antics of Jet. He won’t put himself through chemotherapy, radiation. The doctors say he has months to live.
The blows come thick and fast, and I’m the one sent reeling. They’ve both had time to swallow this bitter pill.
“How long are you staying?” Roger finally asks.
“As long as it takes.” My reply surprises him. He’s not the only one. I hadn’t expected any of this, but it is true. I will be here for him. It’s the least I can do.
“But your life, your mother…?”
I shake my head. I owe this man. There will be calls to make, apologies to give, but I can be here for him, just as he was there for me.
His hand finds mine, squeezing it, happy I’m there, that I’m real.
“I had no idea Jet would do that, could do that. I’m so sorry,” Roger repeats. “I’ll be having serious words with him.”
I brush his apologies aside. It was my choice to answer Jet’s message, to take the ferry from the mainland. It was my decision, I tell him.
“I didn’t think I’d see you again.”
If not for Jet he probably wouldn’t have.
I lay in the single bed of the box room, wishing for sleep. Instead, I’m battered by a monsoon of memory, awash with a deluge of feelings, emotionally out of my depth.
I’m just glad Jet has my old bedroom. That would be a step too strange, though the glimpse I got of his walls confirms my teen crushes of Union J and Lawson have long been papered over. I cringe on behalf of my younger self!
A single mattress and I feel like a teen anyway, duvet a pupa and waiting to come into my own. Still waiting.
Through a crack in the folds of the curtains I see the magnolia boughs, looking like skeletal limbs, tapping to come in from the moonlight.
When I finally dream, it is of the island and the bay.
All this reminiscing and I’m hurled back, to dinosaurs’ remains in local museums we visited, a muddle of geography lessons, Roger’s passion for geology. Cretaceous sand and mudstone ripple in stratified bands. I stride across chalk ridges once undersea.
I dream of it all, a spectator to days bygone.
In the bay the land is practically barren, until spores form, Tortotubus. Then later fungus springs like anthills. Prototaxites, a conduit for life. A Golden Gate Bridge of mycelium and hyphae, for everything else to follow.
In the dream I have a glimpse of absolute clarity–this is how life on the island started. If only I felt so certain about today.
“Look alive, lazy bones.”
So many Saturday mornings I was accused of squandering the day if I slept in beyond eight.
I groan, but also smile, pleased things have not changed too much.
At the breakfast table Jet raises an eyebrow as if to say, finally, he’s someone else to badger.
“Don’t shower, you’re coming with me.”
“Where?”
“The forest!”
Jet snorts. “It’s not a forest.”
He receives a pointed look from his father. “I’ll lend you my snorkel,” Jet offers, placating Roger.
“Wait! What?” I nearly choke on my cereal.
I breathe in deep, steeling myself. I’ve not forgotten the shock of the sea, its power to numb. Even with the borrowed wet gear April’s unforgiving temperatures penetrate as I slap one finned foot after another into the surf.
At first, I just fight with the elements: sharp shifting stone ready to upend me, the tug of the tide, freezing brine, bracing winds that send waves splashing against my chest.
Roger staggers about with all the grace of a land-bound seal, but he’s in first, a toothy grin before he pulls down the mask.
I’m lagging behind, holding back from submerging myself. There’s a strange mix of dread and exhilaration my younger self never knew. She hadn’t the fear, the sensitivities.
Roger’s face down, snorkel up, and I know I have to follow.
I slide the hollow mouthpiece in, pull at the mask’s elasticated fastening, trying to get as tight a seal as possible, and surrender myself to the water.
The raw chill bites at my ears, my nose, nibbling like a school of piranhas. Tentatively I open my tightly squeezed eyes and find that beneath the waves there’s another world. All sound is lost beyond the susurration of the tide, but then I see Roger ahead, checking I’m in, that I’m alright.
I start to kick out, my hands pull forwards, surprised at the muscle memory of swimming. I splutter a little at the salt tang I inevitably swallow, getting used to the snorkel and the spray.
There’s shingle and sand, the odd piece of gutweed dancing, anchored to a rock, but then we’re floating above Roger’s forest–a tangle of green stretching up towards the water’s surface and the sky.
Eelgrass. Whoever named it was right: that’s what it looks like, sinuous charmed snakes all emerald and undulating in the current. It’s rather magical, the morning light tangled in its blades.
“So this is what you’ve been up to?” I’m toweling my hair dry, teeth chattering, my body finally succumbing to the ice.
He nods. “The project started last year. Season by season, harvesting seeds, planting and checking, seeing what’s germinated, raising awareness, recruiting volunteers.”
“You were always good at that.”
“People want to help, they want to do good. They don’t always know how.”
“And this is the answer?” I can’t help feeling skeptical.
“It is! Seagrass is thirty-five percent more effective at storing carbon than the Amazon rainforest. Thirty-five! It pumps out astonishing amounts of oxygen, their roots stabilize the bay, seagrass supports a vast habitat of species, I mean you saw it down there, it filters the water….”
“OK, OK. I get it,” I laugh, overjoyed to see his enthusiasm.
“It’s something tangible I can do. In the doom and gloom of the news and hospitals and all… it’s a legacy I can leave. You understand that?” He’s serious all of a sudden, those watery eyes fix me fast.
“Of course I do.” I reach out and hold his hand.
He’s planting a meadow beneath the waves for us all.
“You’re making a difference,” I reassure him.
“All the volunteers are.”
The lock up is an empty shipping container. In one corner a vast tank drips and the smell of dank seaweed permeates.
“You get used to it,” Roger laughs at my wrinkled nose. A few people look up from their stools to greet him, then return their focus to the seed pods on the benches in front of them.
A startled cry goes up. “Oh my goodness! Anna? Is that…?”
There she is. Tara. I know her in an instant.
She’d been my best friend on the island. Even though we took the same bus to school, it wasn’t until the monthly beach cleanups, both of us dragged by parents / carers, that our rapport was cemented. Wielding litter pickers, flinging bits of soggy rubbish at each other, shrieking with piercing cries that rivalled the gulls, sharing a flask of hot chocolate–that’s when our friendship had blossomed!
I enjoyed them in the end, looked forward to them, the clean ups. Like an army of crabs with our snapping pincers we scoured the bay, scuttled off to other beaches, leaving no stone unturned.
And then I’d gone–it had been so sudden, whisked away on a night’s tide.
Her arms are around me and I’m swept up in her affection.
“I can’t believe it. I searched for you, you know. All the socials.”
“I’ve avoided those for the longest time,” I shrug.
“Well…” She smiles, but I can see the hurt. The sting of the implication. I hadn’t even looked for her. I’d just…gone.
“I’m sorry,” I tear up.
“Oh babes.” She hugs me again. “You’re here now.”
Despite her kindness, I know it’s not right.
“I’m going to put you to work and you can catch me up.”
We tie up eelgrass seed pods in hessian wraps and I try to package the past few years as neatly.
My time with mum, the pretense I’d fallen for, hoping she really had cleaned up her act, like she promised.
Feeling a fool when it became obvious addiction was something she couldn’t give up. That the cycle was beginning again.
The remaining school years: starting over, not knowing anyone, hanging at the library to avoid home, to avoid the estate and the gangs, knowing I had to rise above it, to keep my head above water.
There are things I don’t say, details I gloss over…the days of desperation, working underage just to get money for food, paying our bills so the electric wasn’t cut off, the cold….
There are things I’m still ashamed of…how I finally got free of her.
The truth of it was, I felt undeserving of people like Roger and Tara in my life—accepting, loving, looking for the best in everything.
Some days I still do.
That’s why I didn’t look, why I didn’t message or call. Not because I didn’t want to, or need to, but fearing their rejection. Just like I’d rejected them.
In turn Tara tells me how she’s been rooted to the coast, university by the sea, returning to lead the seagrass project, still going on the monthly litter picks, a part of this community as ever. I envy her that.
“We’ve both come home now. You’ll have made his year,” she affirms with a smile.
Home.
I thought it had been mum. A blood bond. I thought that’s where I belonged.
I think of Jet, how he has what Roger offered me. Love, care, security, adoption. How he’ll lose it all when Roger…goes.
I can’t bear to think it yet.
“He was a bit broken, when you went. He put a brave face on it, but it was obvious,” her voice is low. “He’s missed you, we all have.”
The parcels of hessian have to be placed in the tank and flushed with freshwater in the weeks before planting, the temperature slowly increased to encourage germination.
I stay on, treading water, spending time with Jet and Roger. Everything becomes about simple things: walks, talks, making vegan meals, gardening, reconnecting, supporting them both.
“You can tell me to shut up, but any romance?” Roger asks slyly one day. “No boyfriend, girlfriend?”
“No.” I’ve been working on me, I think. Still a work in progress. “And you? Boyfriends? Friends with…”
He coughs discreetly and I laugh.
“You were always cool with me. You’d be surprised what some kids shout in the heat of the moment, but no, to answer your question, not for a while.”
“I suppose it’s tricky.”
“It’s always tricky, then, now, navigating the heart, yourself.”
I think of Jet, what I know of him…kicked out for wanting to transition, for wanting to feel right in his own skin. All the aggravation and angst from the outside world as you battle to understand your identity.
I think of his chosen name. Jet. Something wonderful forming under pressure.
The sea would understand. There are plenty of examples of fish changing gender due to need or conditions. The sea transforms.
“He’s the one I worry about,” Roger tells me on another day. We’re both wave watching, doing our best talking when sharing our fears with the water. “Just when he was getting settled.”
“It’s awful. Of course it is, but he’s strong. He’s tough.”
“He’ll have the house, but it’s hardly a consolation, is it? He needs a home, people who care.”
I know what he’s hinting at, but I resist the bait. It would be so easy to make false promises, but I won’t do that to him.
I know better than to ask if he feels strong enough, is well enough, when Tara rings. Roger is negotiating his own path to death, and I admire him for it. I learnt early on in my stay that he won’t tolerate fussing.
My hippy-dippy foster father, he used to cause me embarrassment, so vastly different from my mother on the mainland. Now it’s her way of life I find myself renouncing. Not just the drugs and addiction, but the endless want and need, the greed for more.
Shouldn’t we all strive to plant a harvest for the future?
I spend the days at Roger’s side, sowing the sands with sacks of seagrass. We work as a team. As he gets weaker, I take the spade and dig, he drops each hessian parcel, and I cover over what I’ve displaced. We’re not the only ones, of course, there are volunteers from all over the island. Scout and youth groups, teams of pensioners in couples or mobilized in societies. I see their smiles, the glow of satisfaction. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it in my own face.
Tara is there too, organizing it all, working with a men’s support group, ex-army or the previously convicted.
At the end of each session my muscles tingle with exertion.
In the second week Roger lets me loose, sticking with supervising, making teas and doling out homemade flapjack. He sits, basking in Easter sunshine, watching acres being sown.
I know he watches me too, putting down roots, becoming part of something again.
“Your old man’s something else, isn’t he?”
I have to agree with the stranger in camouflage trousers and a heavy metal T shirt. There’s a twinkle in his eyes as he introduces himself.
“I’m Steve.”
He proffers his hand. I pretend not to notice his mates sniggering as I shake it, smile at the firm grip, the warmth.
Later, as we’re packing away the planters, Tara teases me.
“He took a shine to you, don’t think I didn’t notice!”
“I think his mates put him up to it.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure,” she grins.
“Shush. I’m not looking for anything,” I protest as she raises an eyebrow.
“Uh-huh?”
“I’m not!”
Yet I can’t help but consider it, and we giggle like our fourteen-year-old-selves swooning over the rugby lads.
At night I think of the eelgrass in the bay, doing its sea salsa, the new seeds starting to germinate. I hear Roger in the bathroom, hacking and spluttering, the specks of blood and wads of phlegm I’ll wash away in the morning. I think of the fallen magnolia flowers outside the window like beached jellyfish. Growing and dying, as May begins to bloom.
“How was it out there?”
The days he can’t join us he’s eager for every detail of my time on the sands, at the lock-up. He wants to hear all about Tara’s plans, the environmentalists who’ve come to visit the project, the Zoom talks she’s delivering. Tara hopes to replicate this again and again along our coastline. Over a bottle of wine, I cast an eye over bids and proposals for her.
“How was it out there?”
“It’s done,” I tell him.
I sit by Roger’s chair and show him the picture of us volunteers published on the website of the once-print newspaper. We crowd around Tara, all smiles. Steve stands at my side. If there was any justice, it would be Roger. He’s been instrumental from the start.
But of course life isn’t fair. We all know that.
Roger nods, satisfied. The season over. I can see the pain he’s in, how he winces and his very being aches, deep in his chest, in his bones.
We both know it won’t be long.
There is life in the bay now, where I remember none. Though it was never desolate, the sea is more than just rock and sand. It is always barnacle and limpet, sea anemone and wrack. You just have to learn to look and realize the potential.
I can see it now.
There is death in the bay too. As the sun sets, Jet and I stand with an urn, waiting for the tide to turn. Our tears and his ashes mingle with the saltwater. Bereft and yet with each other.
“It’s just another transformation, that’s what he’d say.”
Jet’s right. I can hear Roger’s voice echoing his.
“He’ll be part of the bay, of his forest. The sea will know what to do.”
***
As I change on the beach one of the electric buses trundles along the promenade. It’s a bright but bracing day and I’m glad of the rubbery layer of the wetsuit.
A year ago I stood here with Roger. I’m here again, but I don’t feel alone. There’s Jet and Tara, Steve….
There’s an ebb and flow to life and tides that I appreciate now, our journeys and cycles through the seasons, striving for better each time.
This year I embrace the shock of the waves, slip quickly into the sea and a front crawl. Head down, snorkel up, I swim out to the seagrass beds.
There’s a luster to the mossy green, a healthy shine that pleases me.
Roger’s meadow reaches up to tickle my legs. Somewhere amongst its stems will be flatfish, I can see the shells of mollusks dotted like curling wildflower, thriving amongst the stems.
Wait!
I catch my breath, blink my eyes, hold as still and flat as I can lest I scare him. There, tail curled as an anchor round a frond of grass: a seahorse. It rides the current, undulates between fronds. I can’t help but think of every nature documentary I’ve seen, the marvel in a voiceover expounding on pregnant male seahorses, their pouches on screen exploding in a puff of fry. As if men can’t nurture and care. I think of Roger, how much joy this would bring him. My seahorse.
My vision blurs with tears in the mask. There’s a meadow under the water, partly because of him…and me. It feels good to do my bit, to tend this underwater garden while Tara’s away sowing more seeds, sharing knowledge and working with others.
I swim to shore, each flippered foot imprinting itself on the sand as I climb the beach. I imagine myself evolving, crossing a fungal bridge of spores, emerging from the waters anew, finding my feet, my form.
I grin into the whipping wind, shored up by all that’s happened. I’m ready, I tell the Roger I hold in my head, ready to plant and nurture, to learn and grow.
About the Author:
Morgan Melhuish (he/him) is a queer writer and educator currently living on Ascension Island. In 2026 his work is being published by New Maps, Sentinel Creative and Teneberous Press. You can find him on X @mmorethanapage and on BlueSky under the same handle. His favorite apple is Golden Delicious.