The House on the Cliff

THERE’S a house on a clifftop near my childhood home that I’d always believed to be mine. It hangs above the cliff edge as though it would like to take flight but can’t, anchored as it is by its granite foundations. Instead it gazes out to the sea and the sky above it with its square glass eyes, watching the seagulls whirling and the fishing boats bobbing on the white-capped waves.

The reasons why I believed that this was my house are numerous.

I’d known it since I was a child, from the outside at least, and had coveted it. We went to the beach below the house on most days in the summer, but I never saw anyone enter or leave. Other children were reluctant to go home from the beach, with backwards glances