I

Outside a restaurant in Torremolinos a young man in flared jeans sings ‘La Mer’ with an intensity that sets my heart skipping. I beg Mum for some coins to throw in his sombrero. She shakes her head and continues to string together details of her latest food experience. Gran retrieves a handful of pesetas from her crocheted handbag and deposits them in a leaning tower between the bread basket and the paella remains. ‘Here you go. Girls who know what they want should be encouraged.’ Her eyes twinkle as she raises her glass and her carefully painted pink lips part to let the earthy Rioja seduce her palate. Unlike me, she knows that love can never be sparked too early, that trial and error takes a lifetime to perfect. The Frenchman’s eyes are the colour of the Mediterranean that awaits around the corner. Dad chuckles. ‘Clever young man.’ I slurp my lemonade and, with the straw in the corner of my mouth, repeat ‘What?’, until Dad explains that he’s replaced the lyrics about a glittering sea with birds covered in oil. ‘He’s singing about a living ocean at peril of dying at the hands of careless humans.’ I can’t imagine how you would kill an ocean, but before I can explore this further, the adults have moved on to the Moorish architecture of nearby Alhambra, its intricate carvings and fragrant orange trees framing mirror ponds. Their discussion ebbs and flows with the tides of wine in the lazy heat of the afternoon. I’m infatuated with the singer’s throaty language. I know he is trying to tell me something important. In the following months I will try to replicate the guttural r’s and the shushing sounds, conjuring up my own French that no one else will be able to understand. ‘La Mer’ will stay with me. I will never master the lyrics, but every now and then the intro will pop up in my head, setting off memories. The following morning I wake up to another kind of singing: it’s my fifth birthday.