Italy: My Knight in Shining Bicycle Clips

Four years old and an avid shell collector. I leave our umbrella camp on the scorching sands of Senigallia, setting out on a lone quest to discover what the sea has abandoned on the wet strip left by the receding tide. I wander this way and that along the shoreline, eyes fixed on the pink and white and yellow shells embedded in the damp sand. I look up. A forest floor stretches out before me, umbrellas like toadstools, crawling with thousands of tanned ants.

A pang of realisation. I head inland and, although I hope as hard as a child can hope, am not surprised to reach the road without passing our toadstool. I pick a random direction and start to walk lengthways along the beach, crying. Outside the toilet block, two women approach me and ask my name. They’re Italian, dark-haired and wearing black bikinis and stylish sunglasses. But it’s no problem, because I speak good Italian. I tell them my name and that I’m lost; and also about my hotel, where my friend the bartender gives me glasses of Menta with swizzle sticks.

My friend the bartender comes to my rescue, my knight in shining bicycle clips. I ride back to the hotel on the handlebars of his metal steed. Then I sit on a high stool at the bar, drinking Menta and waiting for my parents. I can’t remember whether they're angry or not.

Back in London, lying in my single wooden bed in the sky blue room that will soon become my baby brother’s, I wonder where I’d be now if I’d never been found.