Tommy was amused again. It was always the way. Ronnie would initially ignore the challenge, but would almost immediately come round to accepting it. He had tried a few things with him and it had always been the same.

Ronnie did not disappoint on this occasion. He leaned back as he led himself into Tommy’s plan. “OK! What do we do?” He had learned to stop arguing about the merits of plans with Tommy. He always ended-up by doing them anyway, and he had to admit, that they were usually always pretty well thought through by him.

“Nothing!” replied Tommy. “We do nothing at the moment – except watch and see whether there is any movement. If, after a week, nothing has happened, and the buoy is still there, we go and have a look.”

Teasing seemed to be the order of the day with Tommy, Ronnie decided. He had built up his curiosity only to have it dashed by the word ‘nothing’. Patience again. Ok, that was a game he could play. He tried unsuccessfully to goad Tommy into saying what they should do after a week, but Tommy wouldn’t commit to anything. Instead, they turned to other topics of conversation.

Despite the frustration about the buoy, Ronnie settled down into the peaceful atmosphere of the cabin with the fire and the hot tea, but eventually it was time to leave. They agreed to meet-up again in a few days to see if there had been any movement.

As Ronnie returned along the beach, his thoughts were turning over and over again about what Tommy had said about the buoy, and he was generally distracted. Thus, as he neared the cliff to work his way around before heading up to the village, he almost missed the cave.

He stopped dead in his tracks. There had never been a cave there before so how could there be a cave there now? Caves didn’t just appear in the rock face. They were formed over centuries of erosion. He didn’t pay much attention in his Geography lessons, but he did know this much about Geology. He approached the cave still thinking that maybe it was a trick of the light hitting the rock face. The sun was getting lower in the sky and there were many strange shadow effects, but this was distinctly a cave.

He felt strangely apprehensive and more than a little cautious as he reached the entrance. Beyond a few feet where the light from outside shone, it was pitch dark inside. He took a few tentative steps inside, wondering how far back it went, but he soon realised that if he were to continue, he would need a torch – something he, strangely enough, didn’t happen to have on him. He could go home and return later, but what if he couldn’t find it again? He had certainly never noticed a cave here before.