I couldn't remember when I'd last seen him. But there he was, stooping into the wind, his jaw set, the blast driving salt tears into his crow's feet and across each raw cheek. There'd been talk in the village when he arrived. People talked. Some might call it neighbourly chat, I call it gossip - God knows -it was hardly 'The Archers' round here.
She wondered, as she often did, who talked about her. Murmurings in the pub; the Mother & Toddler Group. 'Pushy Mums', they called themselves. Well, that was about right. The Pushy Mums were probably having a quiet titter amongst themselves as they paired us off together. Him all crag and clint; me all fey and fern. They've almost certainly pigeon-holed me as some sort of hippy nutter, and him as a Heathcliffe-esque rogue. Not easy to pair off, either of us. I can see that, I'm not stupid.
I huffed and buried my chin in my scarf. The scarf, by this time, was wet with the dew beads of my breath and smelled like a wet lamb. I was stiff with cold, my teeth set to stop the chattering and my shoulders full of an aching tension that I was sure was a precursor to full-blown hypothermia. I found myself longing for the fuggy interior of the caravan, with its smell of hot dust burning on heater element and the unmistakeable tang of a wet dog drying much too slowly. I staggered on, feeling the chill start to numb my stumbling feet, and beginning to have a similar effect on my thoughts. The trees along the bay were curiously bent, as if they were bowing to my caravan. I worked out within weeks of moving in that it was simply a sign that the wind blew relentlessly in the direction of my flimsy home, weaseling its way in through the shabby window frames and howling like a harpy in the small hours. At first the ghastly ululation would unsettle me - a wild lament for the beaten coastline. Now I found it curiously reassuring - if I could hear the wind, at least I knew I hadn't rolled into the sea overnight. More importantly, I knew I wasn't back in the city.
Not my type anyway, I thought as I watched him forge up the bank. There was something in his purposeful stride that made him seem younger than I'd first assumed he was. But then, perhaps he was one of those ageless gritty Hebridean types. The ones who you kind of fancy from a distance until you bump into them in the Spar and realise they've probably got 10 years on your dad. Alarmed to realise that I'd been staring after him for a good minute, I snapped out of my reverie and practically jogged the last half mile to the caravan feeling somewhat like a guilty schoolgirl. I viewed the caravan with mixed feelings. Relief that it hadn't rolled off the cliff (every time I came home I half-expected this might have happened), disgust at the rancid smell of the slumbering dog that hit me as I wrenched the dodgy door open, and a powerful bliss as the warm gust that bore the foetid stench forth began to defrost my rigid face.
