Accommodationally challenged after a disastrous foreign trip in 2007, CJ Stone was forced to take refuge with his parents. It was the first time he’d lived with them since his teens, and he was surprised to find himself in a war zone. Following are CJ’s bulletins from the front line in the eternal war of age and sex.

Mum used to scare me. There was a certain look she would cast down upon me, like a wicked witch casting a spell, which would stop me in my tracks. It was a look of severe disapproval. She would glance from under knotted eyebrows and pierce me with her gaze, sharp and shining like a polished blade. There was nothing I could do to resist its fierce condemnation. I would have to stop doing whatever it was I was doing and obey her unstated command, whatever that happened to be.

I know now that it was a form of telepathy, that I could hear her thoughts.

I’m not sure how old I was. Anywhere from about 12 months old till I was a teenager I would guess. In all those years the effect was exactly the same. In all those years she could always stop me dead with a glance. I suspect now that my rebellion, in my teenage years and beyond, arose from the fact that I didn’t want to admit that this woman had ever had such power over me. My rebellion consisted mainly of doing all the things of which I knew she would disapprove.

Later I forgot about this look and the effect it had upon me. Maybe I buried it. I left home to go to college. I travelled about the world a bit. I moved from city to city in an ongoing search for life and adventure. I grew up. I was married. I had a child. Eventually I ended up here, at Sunsetbeach, and settled down.

I used to go back and visit them, of course, a couple of times a year, sometimes at Christmas, sometimes for one or other of the birthdays. The rebellion faded away and I became a responsible adult at last. Having a child changed my relationship with them. They stopped disapproving, and I stopped doing things to make them disapprove.

Then one year – it was Mum’s sixtieth birthday – there was a party at their house, organised by the whole family. Everyone was there. My sister, Rusty, had arranged for a stripogram. There was a knock at the door and a man dressed as a policeman stepped in. He was asking for Mum by name. Mum has always had a desperate fear of all things pertaining to the Law. You could see the look of shock and confusion on her face when he came into the room where the party was, saying that she was under arrest, looking at his notebook, his cap tucked under the crook of his arm. And then, suddenly, he yanked on his belt and his clothes started to come off. Mum’s eyes became round and she flushed. She didn’t know where to look. He stripped down to a g-string and gyrated in front of her face, making her get on her knees in front of him and take a rose out of his pants with her teeth. She was a furious shade of scarlet by now. It was all painfully embarrassing.

After he’d gone Mum was storming through the house.

“I bet you had a hand in that,” she said, staring at me.

And there it was again, that look, sharp as a razor. It was like I’d been cast back over thirty years and I was just a naughty boy again doing something of which she disapproved. I was stopped dead in my tracks, unable to move, pinned there by her forensic gaze, a child once more, busy making excuses: “No, Mum, um, it was Rusty, honest Mum, it wasn’t me.”

Who says we ever grow up?

Later they decided to move to Sunsetbeach. This was at my suggestion. They’d been planning to move to the West Country to be near my brother but then Bob had a job offer in America. He couldn’t turn it down. Dad was happy in his retirement, having lots of hobbies and lots of friends, but Mum was frustrated and isolated in their suburban ghetto. There was nothing there, just a row of shops and a dusty road laden with traffic.

Something profound shifted in our relationship. I remember walking the streets looking for houses and I had a powerful sense of protectiveness towards them. I wanted them to be safe in their retirement. I could feel the protective arms of the town, like my arms, encircling them. Sunsetbeach is a nice place to be.

They moved in some months later and were transformed by the place. All that sea air. Walks to the beach. Shops, cafés, bars, restaurants. Lots of exercise. Maybe even a touch of romance in the air. They became more tactile with each other. Sometimes, indeed, you’d see Dad sitting extra close to our Mum, looking flush-faced and relaxed. I suspected some hanky panky had been going on.

I remember sitting in a pub with them one evening and Dad was jovial and laughing with one arm crooked casually around Mum’s shoulder and I suddenly realised that the gloom that had descended on Mum’s life had lifted. It had taken its toll upon him too. He’d been the sacrificial victim for all her quiet frustration. Now she was happy she could afford to let him be happy too.

They joined the bowls club and gained a new circle of friends. Their lives were full. Well Dad’s life had always been full, but now they had some shared interests too. They were in the bloom of life again, busy going out and getting on with things, having fun, like a couple of school kids on an extended summer break.

That was seven years ago now. I still had a flat of my own. I would visit them regularly to make sure things were OK. We shared the same town but we still retained a relative distance. It was a liminal time, a time of transition.

And now here I am, in their house again, cast up on their doorstep like a shipwrecked survivor, and everything has changed once more.

I came in late from the pub one night, but I was very careful not to make any noise.

In the morning Mum said, “where were you last night?”

“I was at the pub,” I said. “I didn’t wake you did I?”

“No,” she said, “But I don’t approve.” And she threw that look at me again, the one I recognised from my childhood.

And you know what? It only made me laugh.