Free Mammoth Book of Best New Horror by Stephen Jones Page B

I usher them out of the house. "Be good for grandpa," Paula says, which earns her a husbandly frown. "Text if you need to," he tells them.

        I should have thought mobile phones were too expensive for young children to take to the beach. I don't want to begin the outing with an argument, and so I lead them downhill by their impatient hands. I see the scrawny windmills twirling on the bay until we turn down the road that slopes to the beach. If I don't revive my question now I may never have the opportunity or the nerve. "You were going to tell me who taught you that game."

        Gerald's small hot sticky hand wriggles in my fist. "What game?"

        "You know." I'm not about to release their hands while we're passing a supermarket car park. I raise one shoulder and then the other to peer above them at the twins. "Peep," I remind them.

     
        Once they've had enough of giggling Geraldine splutters, "Mummy said we mustn't say."

        "I don't think she quite meant that, do you? I'm sure she won't mind if you just say it to me when I've asked."

        "I'll tell if you tell," Gerald informs his sister.

        "That's a good idea, then you'll each just have done half. Do it in chorus if you like."

        He gives me a derisive look of the kind I've too often seen his father turn on Paula. "I'll tell mummy if you say," he warns Geraldine.

        I mustn't cause any more strife. I'm only reviving an issue that will surely go away if it's ignored. I escort the twins into a newsagent's shop hung with buckets and spades and associated paraphernalia, the sole establishment to preserve any sense of the seaside among the pubs and wine bars and charity shops. Once we've agreed on items the twins can bear to own I lead them to the beach.

        The expanse of sand at the foot of the slipway from the promenade borders the mouth of the river. Except for us it's deserted, but not for long. The twins are seeing who can dump the most castles on the sand when it starts to grow populated. Bald youths tapestried with tattoos let their bullish dogs roam while children not much older than the twins drink cans of lager or roll some kind of cigarette to share, and boys who are barely teenage if even that race motorcycles along the muddy edge of the water. As the twins begin to argue over who's winning the sandcastle competition I reflect that at least they're behaving better than anybody else in sight. I feel as if I'm directing the thought at someone who's judging them, but nobody is peering over or under the railings on the promenade or out of the apartments across it. Nevertheless I feel overheard in declaring, "I think you've both done very well. I couldn't choose between you."

        I've assumed the principle must be to treat them as equally as possible - even their names seem to try - but just now dissatisfaction is all they're sharing. "I'm bored of this," Gerald says and demolishes several of his rickety castles. "I want to swim."

        "Have you brought your costumes?"

        "They're in our room," says Geraldine. "I want to swim in a pool, not a mucky river."

        "We haven't got a pool here anymore. We'd have to go on the train."

        "You can take us," Gerald says. "Dad and mum won't mind."

        I'm undismayed to give up sitting on the insidiously damp sand or indeed to leave the loudly peopled beach once I've persuaded the twins not to abandon their buckets and spades. I feel as if the children are straining to lug me uphill except when they mime more exhaustion than I can afford to admit. They drop the beach toys in my hall together with a generous bounty of sand on the way to thundering upstairs. After a brief altercation they reappear and I lead them down to the train.

        Before it leaves the two-platformed terminus we're joined by half a dozen rudely pubertal drinkers. At least they're at the far end of the carriage, but their uproar might as well not be. They're