The dog ends in the ashtray are damp from last night’s rain but the smell still lingers. Golden Virginia, the same as my grandfather used to smoke. A quiet, kindly old man when I knew him, though headstrong in his younger days by my mother’s account.

He died of cancer when I was sixteen, unhappy and withdrawing from the world. I didn’t visit him in the hospital, because at that moment I just didn’t want to and my mother had been too cut up to make me. It remains one of my few real regrets.

Though the vivid smell of that tobacco reminds me of him, I can’t recall many details now. Mostly vague images flicker through my mind of time we spent together. Clambering over cliffs to explore caves, hunting for fossils, combing beaches with a metal detector, throwing knives in the garden. 

My grandfather had been in the circus and my mother often likes to tell the story of the old man performing for his unruly, doting grandchildren one bonfire night, his face lit up with joy and mischief, burning branches arcing through the air around us. 

That’s what I remember about my grandfather now. Fire curving through night air, metal splintering wood, cliffs and sky above us, roaring sea below.