My parents were savages. Bred from the hills they came down here barefoot, looking for liquor to swig and sand dunes to dance in. They could whirl up a storm, my parents; shuffling black heels enough to bring up a tornado, enough grains to blind and stick and grate. They would collapse on their backs afterwards, hoarse from laughing and the locals would tut in disgust.

When I was two – the sand dune baby, freshly walking and exploring beaches of my own – my parents built their business from drift wood and nails fashioned out of scrap-iron girders left from the abandoned hotel down the road. They scavenged in the dead of night, hammering and sawing and buying in illegal booze from the fat, sweat-lined men who creep out of pavement cracks late at night.

>¡hola!

My Father, hammering tin guttering with a long, thin roll-up in his mouth, chatting curious locals up like a pool of light. They would flock to him, hovering in the distance at first, but then becoming bolder as the days went on.

>señor

They would ask

>¿qué usted está haciendo?

And I would hear him laugh from behind my mosquito net; my first memory, his voice growling around the moon and me, small and uneasy, wishing he was there. And my Mother, swirling around his shoulders with a glass full of ice.

When my Father hammered his last nail, the celebrations went on for days. The rest of our family swarmed from the depths of their hills, arriving on our doorstep with threadbare soles and lips stuck together with effort.

>¡hola! ¡hola!

I would hear him holler, waving them all in with one outstretched arm and reaching for deep green bottles with the other. My Mother wore her best skirt for the first few days, an ankle-skimming piece of cotton with shards of glass stitched to look like daisies; when the noise became too much, I would hide in its swathes and count the grains of sand between the stitches. Sometimes she would leave me, stepping into the darkness late at night to dance with my Father while I stayed behind with family I did not yet know. They would circle each other like food, moving backwards and forwards like a seamless shadow while I worried they might feel the heat burning from my cheeks and rush forwards to soothe me; they never did. They were caught up in chasing and circling and smelling the night between them.

Sometimes I would lie underneath the furniture carved out of driftwood, counting the splinters and blisters in their hands. They would lie on their backs, spilled drinks shaking into the dust. I would curl up in the damp shade listening to their snores rattling gently through the guttering, always waiting for the pavement-crack men.