Free Wronged Sons, The by John Marrs

Romeo and Juliet balconies running along each side.
    Ahead of me lay the ocean; to the left, the Spanish border and the mighty Pyrenees. Behind me, the body of France. I could run in any direction and no one would catch me. It was the place I could begin again.
    My personal hygiene had been restricted to washing myself in stained basins at truck stops and train stations. So my first priority was to walk down the concrete steps, strip off my musty-smelling clothes and run into the water in just my underwear.
    The salt stung my eyes when I lay face down, grasping a seabed that slipped though my fingers. I swam towards a white metal buoy bobbing along under the spell of the ebb and flow. I linked an arm through its scaffolding and took in the coastline.
    I threw myself under the water and the sound of the waves tussling against the tide tore through my ears. I held my head under until my baptism was complete.
    The harbour was a popular dock for boats and trawlers that ended a day’s fishing in picture-postcard comfort. The gentle vibrations of their engines gave satisfying tingles up and down my arms and legs as my nerves sprang back to life. I closed my eyes, flipped onto my back and slowly paddled towards the beach to dry my new skin in the setting sun’s rays.
    Instinctively, I believed my new life had the potential to be perfect.
     
    June 28, 1.20pm
    Fumes from the Gauloise had fused with the burning cannabis resin and floated up through my nostrils then deep into my lungs. I leaned back on my elbows, sank further into the sand and savoured the high before exhaling.
    “Good shit, man,” nodded Bradley, who sat next to me, cross-legged.
    “Yep,” I replied, without looking at him, my eyes like crescent moons.
    With the aid of my pigeon-French and helpful locals, I’d been directed towards a backpacking hostel on the Rue du Jean. The beachfront buildings were exquisite, but the Routard International was hidden three streets back and under a shroud of dirt and dilapidation. Its cream and olive-green façade had flaked, chipped and fallen like dandruff onto the pavement.
    Inside, framed sepia photographs arranged carelessly on its reception walls revealed its previous incarnation as the Hotel Pres de La Cote - a glowing, three-storey Art Deco boutique hotel. Its geometric shapes were muddied and barely visible behind a hotchpotch of cheap, modern bookcases and dressers. And its former elegance and stylish modernism had all but vanished.
    Marble tiles had dropped from the ballroom’s walls and lay shattered around a grand piano, felled by two fractured legs. It had downgraded from a luxurious destination to an ad hoc home for fly-by-nights with limited means.
    The remainder of Mosses’ money just about stretched to a dormitory bed for the week. The nights I’d spent in a homeless shelter in London as I waited to visit Kenneth had acclimatised me to others’ sleep-talking, snoring and the smells produced by six bodies in a confined space.
    It was mainly young European travellers, keen to explore off-piste beaches away from the glamour of Cannes and Saint Tropez, who inhabited the hostel. I had more years on me than most, but I’d never looked my age. So that allowed me to shave a decade from my date of birth. My hitchhiker’s tan gave me a healthy sheen and masked the weight I’d lost by irregular eating.
    I made acquaintances with small pockets of people who spoke in tongues I often couldn’t understand. But through botched German, Italian, French and plenty of exaggerated hand signals, we muddled along until we caught each other’s drifts.
    I spent my first few days seeking potential employment; from menial and unskilled work pot washing in café kitchens to trawler men’s assistants. But the town looked after its own and there was no place for an Englishman yet to prove his worth.
    So I filled my gaps by familiarising myself with my adopted home through exploratory field trips. My fascination with architecture