'I wonder if you're still alive?' she said in a low voice to the sea, before pulling a bottle out of her pocket and throwing it as far out into the sea as possible.

Years before, as the huge container ships still visited the docks, and there was a bustle of activity around the cranes, she stood in much the same place. Younger, then, and wearing a summer dress, she looked in wonder out to sea, trying to comprehend the distance without any means to measure it. She dipped her feet in the blue-green sea, waving to the sailors on the ships passing by. It was the time before, and she still had a smile on her face at the world, believing the old saying that if you smile, the world will smile back. That was before. She liked coming to the docks, it seemed to be a mysterious place full of life. The strange cargo's from places she couldn't find on a map, the sailors with bawdy tales of ports and people out of sight and mind. She often sat on the dockside, looking out to see. She had once seen a dolphin, breaking the surface of the hidden world, and proving that there may be something looking right back at her.

The one day, in the wake of a container ship, something hit her foot. She looked over, into the strands of swaying seaweed, and picked a bottle out carefully. She looked inside it, too stunned by what she should not be seeing to really register what she was seeing. As though a character in a story, there was a message in the bottle. With shaking hands, she uncorked it, knocking the paper out onto her palm. It was the back of what looked like a travel brochure, the crinkles palm trees and picturesque sunset. There was, of course, writing on the sheet. It was written in what seemed to be charcoal, the letter large and bold. It said, My Name is Andrew. Help me.

For an hour she held it in her hands, just looking over every inch of the word, trying to make out more meaning from the simple message than the words would suggest. Suddenly she had a responsibility to Andrew to help him. And she would of course, though she knew not how. She sniffed the inside of the Jack bottle that the message had come in, and winced at the smell. Carefully corking he bottle she walked away, casting a long glance back to the bright horizon where, somewhere, Andrew was looking back.

In the cold grey winter her ritual seemed ridiculous. It had been fifteen years since she found the bottle, and she still came, every month, to throw her own bottle back into the water. The message was never the same twice, just in case Andrew did receive them. He would not want to get the same news twice, and she could never bring herself to just copy out an old one, it would be like admitting that what she was doing was pointless. She watched her bottle bob away, carried on the currents into the wide world. She often wondered what there was over the horizon. Of course she knew about the world, but she wondered how many other people there were who could also be sending their messages to Andrew. The world could be a far stranger place than she saw on tv. Again, as ever before, she watched until she could no longer see the bottle, then wiped her eyes and turned once more back to her world, the cold, grey word. She knew that wherever Andrew was, it was a lovely day, sun baking the sand and coconut milk flowing freely, and more than once she had wished she was there. The glow of the Jack in her belly faded as she walked away from the deserted docks for another month.