She had a quick back and forth with the butcher, throwing in various pointed remarks about how she’d be purchasing plenty of bacon and sausages from him soon enough, eventuallyagreeing on a price for him to ship some venison over from the mainland in the next few days, with a minimum order that made my eyes water.
‘That’ll make a lot of pasties.’
‘No worries, I’ve got a huge freezer. Besides, they really won’t last that long.’
The next issue was white Stilton. While the delicatessen had two of the blue varieties (impressive enough, given that official Stilton had to be manufactured in one of three East Midlands counties), there was none of the far rarer white – i.e. mould-free – Stilton.
After an extensive tasting session, I persuaded Lily to use a creamy Lancashire cheese combined with some crumbled feta as a substitute.
‘I think this combination might even be better than the Stilton,’ I said, with the growing realisation that, while Parsley’s pasties were downright delicious, food had changed a lot in the past couple of decades. I made a promise to myself that when I got home, I’d spend more time experimenting with different flavours.
We loaded the food into the car once Lily had finished haggling for everything else on her original list, and then she pointed me in the direction of the seafront, swapping numbers with the promise that, if she didn’t hear from me, I’d meet her by the school gates at three-thirty. By the time I’d strolled to the harbour, it was nearly eleven.
I watched the boats bobbing up and down for a few minutes, but found the weight of several empty hours pressing on my shoulders far more stressful than if I’d been neck-deep in food-prep, admin piling up around my laptop.
Feeling lonely was nothing new. The scary part was feeling lost. Adrift.
Not geographically – although being somewhere so different was a challenge.
I felt lost in time. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t have ideas about what to do, more that, without a clear structure, I was overwhelmed at where to even begin.
So, try what you know works,I told myself, after far too long dithering on the verge of panic.Make a schedule.
I crossed the road and headed for the nearest café with outside seating, called Toasty. The three other tables on the wide pavement were all full of people with local accents, causing a ripple of satisfaction that I’d probably found a decent place to start.
I ordered tea, a slice of gooey fudge cake for now and a panini for a later lunch, aiming for holiday-indulgence despite my stomach being full of eleven varieties of cheese, and by the time the waiter brought it out, the tension had begun to subside as I typed out a schedule on my phone notes app, including window shopping in the tourist shops and a couple of hours on the beach.
I had no idea what to do on a beach for two hours, especially with no Internet, but while browsing in a tiny charity shop, I decided to buy a book, and then stopped at a souvenir shop selling beach towels. My confidence growing by the second, I settled down to read the first few pages.
The next thing I knew, I was waking up to find the tide lapping at my ankles while a labradoodle gobbled my sandwich.
‘Oh, my goodness, I’m so sorry,’ the dog owner cried as she ran over, although her face was contorting in a way that made me think she was trying not to laugh. ‘Pigeon can’t resist mozzarella.’
I scrabbled to my feet, rescuing one trainer from an incoming wave as she yanked the dog away by its collar and clipped on its lead.
‘Is that your book?’ the woman asked, pointing at the novel now bobbing about on the waves.
Before I could tell her that it didn’t matter, it had only cost a pound and the first chapter had sent me to sleep, she’d stripped off her maxi dress, handed me Pigeon’s lead and was wading in.
She looked stunning, thigh-deep in the water as she reached for the book, droplets shimmering on her toned arms, honey-blonde highlights cascading down her back. Somewhere around my age. I imagined she spent her days off surfing or sailing around the headland, not cleaning her already clean house and reading books about places she’d never been to and never would.
‘Here.’ She splashed back out, shaking her barely damp hair like someone in a shampoo commercial before handing me the soggy clump of paper. ‘The least I could do. I’m so sorry this naughty boy ate your lunch. Say sorry, Pigeon!’
Pigeon said nothing, the look on his face implying that he was more proud than sorry.
‘The tide comes in up to the post.’ She pointed at a wooden sign clearly stating,High Tide. ‘But mainlanders are always leaving their stuff on the beach while they go off swimming or whatever, and next thing they know, their phone and keys are halfway to Wales.’
Grabbing my towel, she started vigorously rubbing her legs. ‘I’ve never seen anyone lose their stuff while sat right next to it, though. Were you half asleep?’
‘Fully asleep, actually,’ I said, trying not to cringe. This woman was a goddess. So utterly relaxed in her own skin, which perhaps wasn’t surprising considering how gorgeous it was.
‘Ah.’ She dropped the wet towel on the sand and took Pigeon’s lead back from me. ‘You’re lucky he only got your sandwich, then. This rascal ate my dad’s wallet once, because there was a stick of chewing gum inside it. Thankfully, not the kind that’s poisonous to dogs.’
She began walking back towards the edge of the beach, her dress draped around her shoulders like a shawl. ‘Are you coming?’
In the spirit of my new, wildly spontaneous life, I decided that I was, slipping on my trainers and stuffing the towel into my bag as she chattered on about the dog needing surgery, but her dad’s bank card being ruined from the toothmarks.
After leaving the beach, we crossed over and strolled past a few shops and the Grand hotel before she ducked down a side street, stopping at a tiny hole-in-the-wall food outlet, briefly pausing in her current tale about a local who lost their wedding ring in the sea and then found it inside an oyster shell three years later, to order three lobster rolls.
