The Unthinkable

A huge purple door washed up in the bay overnight, its paintwork blistered and peeled from weeks at sea. The town storyteller wasted no time in getting to work: the beguiling, eldest girl of a proud, bankrupt farmer had slammed that door in the face of a Freemason’s son, who in turn had bulldozed both farm and family over the cliff, except for the girl, who lived now by the light and heat of a driftwood fire on a beach. There was some plan to use the door as a jetty or landing-stage, but it was all bullshit, the usual idle talk. That’s when he left and never returned. Him I won’t name — not known for his big ideas or carpentry skills, a famous non-swimmer, but last seen sailing out, riding the current and rounding the point in a small boat with tell-tale flashes of almost certainly purple paint.