It felt so strange to wake up to the sea and spice smell of the Jolly Roger. I couldn't remember where I was at first. I had slept well (I suppose it was the rum) and a little while after I woke, there was a knock on the door.

"Breakfast is served," called Smee. I opened the door - Smee was gone, but there was a little tray with a cup of tea, some buttered toast and marmalade, and a boiled egg in a silver egg-cup shaped like a shell. I took it through to the main cabin, and ate it all hungrily. Had I been back in London, I would have found it delightful, but it seemed such a waste to stay on a pirate ship and get treated to five star service.

When I had finished, I set out to take my tray back down to the galley, and to explore. The first person I met was Smee - he seemed a little startled or embarrassed to see me, but he rallied himself well.

"Good day, miss," he said. "I'm terrible sorry about yesterday."

"Think nothing of it." I was uncomfortably aware that I felt grateful to him for bringing me here.

"Let me take that tray."

"Thank you, Smee."

As I walked around the deck, the crew were all very polite to me, raising their hats and wishing me a good morning in the politest of terms. I felt like the queen, and not in a good way. Every time I turned a corner, packs of cards were swiftly tucked into pockets, bottles shoved behind piles of rope, song lyrics bowdlerised and curses changed to 'oh dear me'. I supposed that they were under command to be on their best behaviour. It was funny and rather sweet, but I would have preferred to see what things were really like. In the end I took pity on them all and returned to the Captain's cabin.

When I was bored of tinkering on the harpsichord (a fine instrument, insofar as I could tell, though the keys on the right hand side were badly scratched and dented,) I turned to the bookshelves. In pride of place was a well-thumbed thesaurus. There was a complete Shakespeare, which fell open at iRichard III/i. I wondered whether Hook considered the crookback king something of a role model. There was also some A.E. Housman. Finally, there was a thick tome entitled iMyths of the Piccaninny Indians/i. I noticed several bookmarks sticking out of it, and when I opened it, I saw that someone had been scribbling in the margins. This is what I took back to one of the red velvet chairs, with the big tacks and (when I looked closely) what looked like an old bloodstain at which someone had scrubbed hard but not managed to remove.

I began reading where the first bookmark was, and saw at once that I would want to read on:

"The Never Land Piccaninnies believe that their native island is ruled be two deities: Manitou, the great mother-goddess, and Pan, her son. Manitou is the Goddess of life, birth, time and death. She takes a number of different animal and human forms and is also known as 'the devourer'. Pan is the boy-god of youth and joy also known [ironically?] as the Great White Father. It is not generally thought that he has any connection to the Greek god of the same name. Professor Llewellyn-Davies has suggested a common root through the animistic religions of Neolithic man, but his theory is still considered highly controversial. The story of Pan's birth is one of the 'Six Secret Stories' known only to the female elders of the tribe."

The margin notes (in ink! Truly the life of a Buccaneer is one without respect for even the most fundamental rules of civilised society) were hard to decipher. One read "Neverbird?" and another something like "Amnet?" or "Ammet?" but I didn't get any further before the door opened and the Captain strode in.

"My humblest apologies," he said, "I have been tied up with work. I hope you have amused yourself?" I wondered what exactly "work" was for a pirate moored in harbour.

"I've been reading," I said. He took the book from my hands.

"Interested in native culture, are you?"

I decided there was no point in being subtle. "I'm interested in Peter Pan," I said. It was the first time that either of us had mentioned that name, and I thought I saw him flinch very slightly at the sound of it.

He sat down in the chair opposite mine. Our knees were almost touching and it thrilled me. He did not speak for several seconds, then he did so quietly, every word enunciated:

"Why are you 'interested' in Peter Pan?"

"Because I love him."

"As a mother?"

"As a... as myself."

"And what did you hope to find in my book?"

"I wanted to discover the... the..."

"The riddle of his being."

"Yes. Yes! That is exactly the phrase I wanted to use, only I thought it sounded silly."

"It is a phrase many have used before. Have you seen him yet? On this visit to Never Land I mean." His tones were measured, very calm, almost casual. Something like doctor questioning a patient about his symptoms.

"Yes... or rather... no. I saw someone who looks like Peter and calls himself Peter, but he bisn't/b Peter. Not the Peter I used to know."

The hook twitched a little as (I remembered) it always did when he was agitated. "Are you sure?" Suddenly there was urgency in his voice. "Are you absolutely sure? How could you tell?"

"I just knew, Captain. And I think you knew it too, or at least suspected it. No? Please tell me what you know, Captain."

Another appraising stare, another long pause, then:

"I have been researching Pan's... origins for some time now. I have long suspected... well, all sorts of things, but most pertinently that his much vaunted immortality, this 'eternal youth' of his is actually far from eternal."

Suddenly I realised something. "Pertinent? Pertinent to what? You just want to kill him, don't you? This research, it's just so you can destroy him."

"I will confess that that was - is - was my primary motivation. You must understand how little choice I have in the matter. It is my vocation to pursue him - that is what I was put on earth to do - it's an instinct."

"Nonsense!" I said. "A man of breeding and education like yourself bound by 'instinct'? That's ridiculous."

He gave a wry smile. "You would think so, wouldn't you?"

"But why? Why can't you just sail off and do something else?"

"Why indeed. That is my other motivation. My main one now, perhaps. I want to find out why my fate is bound to his in this way. I want to learn how to be free of it. I want to know who I am."

"I... I think I understand," I said, and I did. And yet the rational part of me was horrified that I was accepting a grown man's excuses for the murder of a child.

"So, what else have you discovered?" I asked.

"How do you mean?"

"I've read the relevant passage in iMyths of the Piccaninnies/i. What else do you know?"

"There is a myth not in that book, a myth about Pan's birth."

"One of the Six Secret Stories?"

"That is correct."

"You know it?"

Pause.

"I... do."

"How!?" I was getting excited.

"It was told me by one of the elders of Tiger Lily's tribe."

I opened my mouth to ask how he had persuaded her to part with one of her people's most sacred secrets, but then I closed it again. I did not want to know. He smiled as though he were reading my mind, then began. His tone was a strange one, something like a don giving a lecture, something like a father telling a story.

"All children grow up, unless they are lucky enough to die first. What makes childhood a sacred time in the eyes of the Piccaninnies is the fact that it ends. The distinctive feature of the child - that which makes him admirable, enviable, worthy of worship is the speed with which he learns, changes, develops. And the inevitable result of learning, changing, developing is that one grows up. It would be nonsensical to have a god of childhood who did not grow, because growing is the very essence of childhood. Do you see?"

I did.

"In an hour when the world was still young, Manitou laid an egg, and when it hatched, out crawled a boy-child by the name of Pan. Sometimes the great Mother eats her offspring and sometimes she does not, but before she could decide to do with this one, the fairies, much enamoured of his comeliness, stole him away.

His naming ceremony was a grand affair, with the Fairy Queen herself in attendance, but unfortunately the appointed godmother was terribly forgetful. She remembered her oaths, she remembered the lighted candle, she even remembered to hold the child the right way up, but alas! She had forgotten to bring the child a gift. The time came: the central moment of the rite:

"Child, I gift thee with..." She spoke as slowly as she was able, desperately feeling in her pockets for anything that would do, but unfortunately she had cleared them in honour of the occasion. She looked around but there was nothing and no-one to help. Everybody waited.

To give nothing would be unimaginable shame, so when she had an idea, she decided to go with it, even though she was well aware that as ideas went it was, it was not a particularly good one. "At least," she reasoned, "it will prevent me from making the same mistake again."

"Child, I gift thee with my own bad memory. May it serve thee well."

She was expecting jeers, but before there was time for them to come, the Fairy Queen stood up and smiled. "A wise gift, lady, though a strange one. For he who cannot remember griefs has only joys, and he who cannot learn will remain always a child, and childhood is the most blessed state of life."

But Peter did not remain always a child - he had a bad memory, but not a non-existent one. Slowly - unimaginably slowly to any mortal - he changed and grew tall, and one day one of his baby teeth became loose and fell out. The little clink it made on the hard rock roused Manitou, his mother, the mother of us all, and a great hunger grew in her that could only be satisfied by the taste of her own son's flesh. She moved from her lair to pursue him. But she left behind an egg, and when it hatched, out crawled a boy child by the name off Pan."

"And thus it will go on," I said, shivering, "so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless."

"What?" He spoke sharply.

"Just something from a story," I said. Slowly it was sinking in. Peter changes. Peter grows. Peter is no rock, no philosopher's stone, no comforting bastion against the forces of mutability. He cannot be relied upon to remain himself any more than he could be relied upon to love or to remember. I was lonely. Lonely and angry and afraid.

The Captain was looking intently at me. "I know," he said softly. I had never heard him speak that way before.

"What?"

"I used to want to kill him because he had the audacity to stay the same when the rest of us were doomed to decay and death. Now I want to kill him because he has the audacity to change."

That night the sunset had been a slow one - oranges and pinks and purples gradually mellowing into dark. When I looked out, I saw the stars.

"Time for bed," said Hook, and stood up to leave.

"You could always sleep here," I said, on an impulse.

"And deprive you of a bed? Come lady, I would not be so ungentlemanly." Was he teasing me? Was he? I was prepared to risk it.

"I mean with me, Captain. I'm lonely. I would appreciate some company.

I looked up at him in what I thought might be a seductive manner. I wasn't used to that kind of thing. I married Tootles at nineteen, and there had been no need for courtship, let alone seduction. We went straight from being children playing at house to being grown-ups doing much the same.

He showed no surprise. "In that case yes, I should love to stay."

Then we were sitting on the bed. The awkwardness of it made me laugh. I took off my bodice, skirt and stays, and let down my hair.

"You are very beautiful," he said. I caught sight of myself in a mirror with my rumpled petticoat and grubby chemise and laughed again. He kissed me - sucking at my mouth and doing something strange with his tongue. I had never kissed like that before, and I liked it. He pulled me up onto his lap, so I was sitting facing him, my legs loosely wrapped around his body. We kissed again, and this time I tried to do the tongue thing myself, and it must have worked, because I felt the stirrings beneath me that mean a man likes what I'm doing. He put his arms around me, and I felt cold steel on the back of my neck. It was delicious. As I kissed him harder, he stroked my back with the hook, firm, but very slowly, as though counting every one of my vertebrae. When he came to the drawstring of my petticoat, he undid it with an admirable deftness, and I slipped out of it, and out of my chemise and bloomers as well.

His attire was considerably more problematic. The coat got caught on the hook, the waistcoat buttons were too tight, and the breeches were torn as he clawed impatiently at them. When finally there was just the shirt left to go, he would not let me remove it, but instead pushed me down onto the bed, sitting on top, holding my left shoulder with his hand, and caressing my face with his hook.

I could not tell whether he was amorous or angry, whether he wanted to please me or hurt me. I suspected he was peeved at the clumsiness of his disrobing.

He bent down towards me, and as he did so, something slipped from the neck of his shirt - a pendent of some sort - so close that it was hard to focus, yet there was something familiar about it. Then all at once I knew.

"My kiss!"

He drew back suddenly.

"What?"

"You're wearing the kiss - the thimble I gave to Peter. You stole it!" But even as I said it, I knew he hadn't.

I fancied I saw into his mind then - saw the memories flooding back: the sweetness of his glorious childhood, taunting the long-dead man whose shape he now bore; the bitterness of the day that first tooth fell and he was dragged from paradise to a cold, lonely place with no memories, no family, no friends - nothing but a puzzling little thimble on a string to link him to his past.

He was shaking. I wanted to hold him, to take him in my arms and comfort him, but I knew that would be unwise, so instead I smiled, and found that as I did, my heart was lifted, and the strangeness and solemnity of the revelation melted away.

"Peter," I said, "what are your exact feelings for me?"

"Those of a devoted son, Wendy."

"Really?"

"Oh yes. What's the matter? I thought all the fashionable ladies in Bloomsbury read Freud these days." Then he was smiling too, and both of us were laughing, lying side by side on the bed, and oh the sweetness of it!