The Sea Glass Collector – Part 1: Tideline

The best sea glass came after a storm, and Isla was on the beach at first light.

She walked the tideline in wellies and an oversized jumper, bending, stooping, collecting. Shards of frosted green, amber, a rare cobalt blue, each smoothed by decades of waves into a jewel the size of a thumbnail. She was twenty-nine, a jewellery maker from Glasgow, working out of a rented caravan on the Argyll coast. The glass was her material. It was also her peace.

"That one's from a Victorian medicine bottle," said a voice.

She looked up. A man stood on the shingle with a dog at his heels and a mug of tea. He was thirty-two, tall, broad, in a battered waxed jacket, with sandy hair and quiet, intelligent eyes. "Callan. I live in the cottage by the lighthouse. Sorry. I didn't mean to talk at you."

"You know about sea glass?"

"I know about this beach." He nodded at the piece in her hand, pale green and worn soft. "That's from the Margaret Rose. A steamer that went down in 1911. They carried bottled lemonade."

"You're making that up."

"I'm not. I'll show you the wreck."

At low tide, he led her over wet rocks to a reef where the ribs of an old hull stuck up from the sand. The sea sucked and sighed around them. He picked up a piece of cobalt blue and put it in her palm.

"Poison bottle," he said. "Apothecary."

"It's beautiful."

"They all are, when you know where they came from."

She turned the glass over. Sunlight caught it, sending a tiny blue star across her skin. "Can I ask you something?" she said.

"Yes."

"Will you tell me the history of every piece?"

"It would take years."

"Green?" she said, a piece of glass.

"Green," said Callan, a slow smile. "Very green. Come for tea. I have a drawer full."

Continue the story: Part 2 – The Drawer.