"When you were a kid, did you ever pretend that you were lost on some island?"

It was a strange question, but it struck a chord inside me. I laughed. "Did you?"

We were leaning on the rail that ran along the pier. It wasn't a proper pier - not like the one it had replaced. That had been an Edwardian fantasy of cast iron and wooden planks, complete with amusements and gaming booths. However, that pier had gone many years ago when someone had set fire to it. It had burnt down overnight, turning the sky above it an angry orange. This pier was a length of solid concrete, solid and unromantic.

"Of course," she said. "We used to make a fort in the back garden and pretend that the grass was the sea."

"Ah, well. I had a distinct advantage over you, then." I pointed across the greasy waves below us, gesturing towards the far side of the bay. "We would go down to beach. Sand, rocks, sea. Everything you need. So long as you kept your back to the land, it didn't need much imagination to pretend you were marooned."

She looked at me. "What did you do on your desert island?"

"We would bury treasure, then dig it up again. Then we'd eat our lunch. Sandwiches tasted better down there than at home. Alright, they were gritty and you had to fight off the flies, but there was something magic about sitting in the open air, tasting the sea salt on them."

"My dad wouldn't let us dig up the lawn. He hardly let us walk on it! So, we would put messages into old milk bottles and let them roll down the hill. Then we'd send someone to get them and pretend to come to rescue us."

I nodded. "We put messages into bottles as well. Then we'd throw them into the sea. I used to put my name and address in, hoping that someone would find the bottle and write back to me."

"Really?" She paused for a moment. "Did anyone ever write back?"

"No," I said. "But it didn't stop me from trying. I don't know how many bottles I threw into the sea. If I'd taken them back to the shops, I would have been rich. Well, rich for a nine-year old boy."

We made our way back along the pier, towards the shore. On a whim, I looked down into the oil-filmed waters that lapped against the green-stained concrete. There, amongst the flotsam, was a bottle, its glass glinting in the sunlight. "Wait here."

I climbed down the steps to the water and leaned out to grab the bottle. It was new, unstained by the sea, and inside was a slip of rolled-up paper.