Will and Testament by Sarah Hills, an Italian single espresso, black with sugar, drunk standing

I, Ann Martin, of the Isle of Mull, author, make this my final Will and Testament, confirming that it replaces all other wills and testaments I have made (there are none, but I understand this is the necessary formulation) on 25 December 2025 (I pay no attention to tinselled events others invent to celebrate).

In the event of my death, I leave my household possessions, such as they are, to my neighbours who have given me support over the years. This does not include any books found in my house or the contents of my study. These I leave to my surviving daughter, Rev. Stella May Martin. To my daughter, I leave the rest of my estate and any and all rights and income that arise from my writings, including my as yet unpublished writing.

I ask Stella to read this Will together with the enclosed letter.

Signed Anne Martin

 

Dear Stella,

Your God knows, Stella, that I have had real doubts about leaving you outright both my money and the rights to my books, and that I would stop you wasting your inheritance on your chosen profession or stop you spending it all on trying to protect the bloody sea creatures you so love, if I could. I thought about leaving it in a trust for you, but you would see that as a lack of trust, of course.

I know you are frowning reading this. The irony is not lost on me that I should sound concerned about money which has meant so little to me during my life. At the end of my life, however, I find myself needing to make things clear. You will smile, no doubt, when I tell you that I can hear your father laughing in my ear even as I write.

Doing the right thing, he would have called it. Have I ever told you that you laugh just like him?

 

Just a year ago, if I had thought about it, I would have chosen to die intestate, without will, without caring. My legacy, I believed, lay in the books I had written. Completed and done; they were out in the world long since, doing what they could. This island had become my refuge away from the world’s noise – that incessant compulsive communication, a tsunami of words. It had proved impossible to empty my mind of other people’s words in order to find my own: radios, TV, tablets, phones, texts, Twitter, Facebook, newspapers, e-mails. The chattering monkeys had never loved language more. I could no longer hear myself think.

After the accident, there was no reason for me to stay. I took myself away to this island. Here I could live without internet and telephone. Communication went back to paper. I emptied my head, filled it with endless sea and sky, cries of seabirds and howling winds, but my own words did not come back to me. I did not expect them to.

Now I cannot look at the sea without seeing you. It was very clever. You always were the clever one. I scan the sea for that seal head that bobbed into view, getting bigger and bigger, until you were walking up the beach towards where I sat, wrapped in blankets, holding my mug of tea. You pushed up those diver’s goggles, unzipped your wet suit, reached over and took my cup of tea.

‘I wrote, but you never responded,’ you said, taking a swig of tea.

‘What is there to say?’ I said. It was already wrong. Between us, since the accident, before the accident, we never got the words right.

You looked at me and I looked back. Your gold cross glinted like a piece of barbed wire.

‘I heard you got ordained,’ I said.

Your face lit up as if a lover had arrived. My toes curled inside my boots.

‘I didn’t think you would approve.’

I shrugged. ‘Atheist me? I don’t. Does it matter?’

You shrugged too. “I’ve a favour to ask you.”

‘Oh,’ the moment of sunlight disappeared behind the clouds. ‘You’d better come inside.’

 

In the cottage, by the fire, you talked to me about your mission. I say nothing about my once-a-month trips to the library to access your blog or that I know about the campaign to save the Moray Firth dolphins. Spaceport! I had snorted, but the librarian, Mandy, passed me articles and reports about the huge telecommunication company wanting to build a spaceport where it would disrupt the sea life for miles. How they plan to send people for trips up above the atmosphere.

You had turned your gift for creating uncomfortable challenge on the company’s tycoon owner. In a dramatic live TV debate, he had pledged that, if you could complete that fictional round-the-world-in-80-days trip without taking a plane, he would preserve the Moray Firth himself. He promised millions to establishing a national marine sanctuary if you could make it. To prove no one could live without air travel these days. To discredit you.

I recognised his discomfort, watching his eyes glance towards you as soon as he had spoken.

‘So, you want money?’ I said.

Your eyebrows rose. ‘No. I never want your money. When have I ever asked you for money?’

That is true. You never ask me for anything simple. Other people, my son, Dan, could be satisfied with money and gifts, easy tokens. Stella, no. You always wanted a pound of flesh.

‘I need you to come with me.’

I gaped then, like a surprised fish out of water. I remember I laughed. It had been quite a while since I laughed, and it was shockingly loud in my head.

You crossed your legs before your chest, hugged them. ‘He said I had to take you. He said, you’re the priest with the famous novelist mother. Take her with you. It must be both of you. She’ll be ancient now and slow.’ She was not looking up; she was holding on to that cross. ‘You know me, mum, I always double down. I said, that’s worth twice the money, and he said, OK – a sanctuary here and another one wherever you choose. Double or nothing.’

‘That’s ridiculous. I’m 69. I’m not travelling round the world at my age.’

‘I’ve got your tickets. Permits, visas and invitations from all over the world. We leave on Monday. Once we start, we’ve got just over 11 weeks.’

I looked at you as you stared at the fire. I’ve known this face through all your ages, and I’ve only seen that expression once before. When you got up to do the oration at the funeral for your father and brother. It is a face that says you either do this or break. I ask myself whether I can bear to lose another child and I know I have no fight left, otherwise why would I be here, hiding from the world on the Isle of Mull?

 

Time moves on, taking me with it whatever I might want. Clouds slide over my head and the sun comes out. The world is pleased with itself whether I care or not: dead things rot and new life grows out of them. I could already feel station platforms under my stocking feet. We were going round the world.

And when I got to the Moray Firth, I was going to slap that man as hard as my arm would allow.

 

We went. The journey and its ups and downs are a whole other story, or a multitude of stories. Now people buy our books about it – all proceeds to charity, of course. For a recluse like me, at the start, it was like exposing skin to sandpaper. Languages of the world battered me. Trains and buses rattled me from side to side. I washed the dirt of continents from my skin with water from the seven seas. Throughout it all we wrote – you typed endlessly on social media: where we are, what we are doing, why we are doing it:  the compulsive modern chat. But I could see you, with your words, building a marine sanctuary, mile by mile, wave by wave, out of bravado and sustained belief. And I wrote too. I surprised myself, me, who believed the fountain of creativity long dead. I found stories in trains and stations, watching people and cities. In our mad dash across continents, multiple blessings of stories floated down on me.

Throughout it all, you and I regarded each other like opponents over a chess board, pacing round each other like dancers in those medieval dances, where no one touches.

Until the train on the last leg from London. Do you remember? When we were racing for the line, minute by excruciating minute, with railway companies pulling everything to one side after public demand, speeding us back to Aberdeen, the world watching with panting breath.

You said, looking out the window, ‘I never seem to be able to impress you.’

I stop writing, turn these words over in my hands, unable to see them. ‘I do not know what you want me to say,’ I reply.

‘Why is that?’ still looking out. ‘Why is it - with all your words - that you are so good with, you struggle with my words? You loved Dan so much. Why not me?’

I stare at you but no words spill out of my open mouth.

After a pause you go on, in the reflection in the window your eyes glitter. ‘You poke at my faith. Yet you go on writing, creating story after story, world after world. When you must know, you must feel, these are the same thing. My faith and your creativity,’ your hands lift and fall, ‘these are all just reflections of the same thing.’

I cannot understand your words. I buried the best part of myself in a cemetery in Devon, yet the train takes me onward, the world rolls and my heart somehow keeps up. My heart, which I hide inside my pen and trace inside the shapes of my letters, wrote on the notebook in front of me, tore off the page and slid it across to your clenched hands.

I write it for you again: I have always loved you, never doubt this. You always amazed me; I called you star. Dan only needed a hug to know he was loved. You want the thoughts inside my head, words from my soul and I am no good at speaking. Your father did the talking. But I should have written this before: I am proud of you, even when we do not agree, I am proud of you.

I go to the buffet car then. I buy two teas. I take time straining the teabags, stirring in milk. When I return, you are back on the ubiquitous laptop, because we are nearly there, we are going to make it. The whole train appears to be cheering.

We made it to the finish line with ten minutes to spare. I did not slap the rich tycoon, mostly because you were holding so tightly to my arm as we collected the cheque.

 

Now, I write this, my will, and this, my last letter to you, in case of accident. In case I die in the next six months crossing South America on foot with you to try to save the remaining Amazon rainforest. In the event of my death, I leave all my wordy and worldly goods to you, Simone, beloved daughter.

Ann Martin

 

About the author

Sarah lives in the North of England and has recently started taking her writing seriously. 

 

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A Heart Called Petra

 

by Sarah Hills

first coffee of the day

 

How did I get here? How am I, Mrs Elizabeth Steadman, at this chilly lakeside, swimming costume in a plastic bag like a child at primary school, pretending I am here to get in the water? As if I would even put my feet into that soil-stained water? As if I am 9, not 59 years old, and I still have a heart called Petra.

 

When I was a small child, my heart became a kind of pet for me. I imagined this half wild, half-tamed fur creature burrowed into my chest, peeking out at the huge world. She was my invisible friend. I was Beth Morris in those days, and I called her Petra, after a dog on a children’s TV show. I invited her to eat small snacks beside my plate at mealtimes, introduced her to people, placed a cushion beside my pillow at night for her. It was a phase that did not pass over as the usual phases of a young child. I grew older, adapted more to convention and no longer announced her to the dinner table. Nonetheless, Petra went everywhere with me.

The things I liked, Petra liked; spring and autumn, walking on clear days with the wind blowing in our faces, bird-watching, being by the sea, parties, presents, the summer sun when it lay like a sheen over everything. As I grew up, I liked to find new things to show Petra, to check out with her – do we enjoy this? Shall we do this? She loved dancing and people who made her laugh, reading books, making things.

 

I watch myself, a caricature of a middle-aged woman, grey-haired, practical cagul, sensible shoes, large tummy and rounded back, shaking the hands of Duncan and Trish, both comfortingly substantial people. There is a group already swimming round pink and orange buoys bobbing in the black water. I am impossibly outside. The lake itself is implausible. I remember when this was a quarry and a slag heap, places to be avoided. Now, somehow, it is a wetland reserve and a lake to swim in. A future where I will get into that lake is a matter of science fiction.

“I’ve never swum outside.” I begin. “In England, I mean. This isn’t for me. It was the doctor’s idea.” 

About the author

Sarah lives in the North of England and has recently started taking her writing seriously. 

Trish smiles. “It’s not deep on this side.” Her plump hands shaking each other encouragingly across her stomach. “You don’t have to swim at all. We have people who come just to walk up and down the far side, for the water resistance training.”

She has misunderstood me. But before I can say anything further, Duncan, with the enthusiasm and exuberance of a puppy, despite his balding head and beer belly, is ushering me into a small prefab and showing me changing cubicles and piles of towels. There are rows of thermos flasks and trays of homemade brownies. For after.

“What have you got to lose?” Duncan says. He holds out a large orange towel. Petra liked orange.

The rough dry material scrapes against my palms releasing memories of swimming lessons as a child, swims with my own children, the feel-good sensation of getting dry after swimming. I let myself be bullied gently into changing.

Pulling on my swimming costume feels like dragging on one of those old diving suits. The ones with great round metal and glass bowls over the head. I cling to the towel round my shoulders and follow Trish out. More like a cow to the abattoir than a patient trying therapy.

The air alone is an affront to my bare skin. What am I doing? Where is the sticking place I can dig my heels in to and say, no way, not me? I count ten people doing laps on the circuit. The water is black, edged by reed beds full of sharp stalks. The sky is heavy with grey clouds.

“Now. It’s best to wear these.” Trish is holding up a pair of fabric slip-on shoes with rubbery soles. “So you don’t slip, cos the bottom is mud, see?”

She is talking to me as if I am a child. She must be a primary school teacher. No. A dinner lady. Kindly, but no nonsense. You get what you are given.

I put on the slippers. Trish takes my hand, guides me forward till my toes are almost in the water. Duncan hovers to one side. He is wearing wet suit shorts and a huge T-shirt with ‘Wild swimmers do it in the Cold’ written across it.

 

When I met Robin Steadman, Petra loved him, with his wild mane of black hair and his serious politics. She loved his romance, his proposal. She was wild with joy when we married and moved in with him. Petra was there when our children were born. I became Mrs Elizabeth Steadman as Robin’s career in IT took off and we entertained his clients and colleagues. Everyone called me Mrs Steadman, or Elizabeth. I was particularly good at making pavlova.

Life got busy. Children. Work. Robin and I, we were good at life’s administration. We were good at paying bills and making sure the kids got everything. We were good at making sure our house looked like it should, glossy and neat. It all worked like clockwork once we got the hang of it.

I do not know when I lost Petra. I remember thinking, one summer holiday in Greece, on a day so hot for once we could all only sit and be silent, that it must be OK; that Petra and I must have become one. I remember smiling to myself, because of course we had always been just one and it was crazy for me to keep thinking of my heart as a creature in her own right. A childish phase that I had somehow hung on to.

 

“Now, Elizabeth. Just take one step at a time.” Trish could be encouraging a first day child into the playground. She has taken one of my hands and is looking at my feet intently. As if stepping off the shore is like stepping on to a thin, thin line and, if she is not careful, I might fall.

I am already falling. I think. I have been falling for years.

I take a step forward, up to my ankles.

The water is freezing. I gasp and something blasphemous is forced out between my lips.

Duncan grins. “Cold, isn’t it?” He backs into the lake. “I find it best to take a few steps before you can think about it.” He’s up to his knees, shins showing white through the water, knees above bright red.

Trish frowns at him. “At your own speed, dear.” She says to me. “There’s no rush.”

The swimming group come past us. I fear I will know someone, but they are all strangers. They call out to me. I can tell they think immersing one’s whole body in ice is just one short step to happiness, jollity, even world peace.

I step after them and now I am knee deep. My feet hurt with the ice chill. My teeth chatter with the breeze coming across the lake.

“I can’t do it.”

Trish squeezes my hand. “You are doing so well. Really. It takes some people two goes to get to their knees.”

“It’s too cold.”

Duncan flings out a fist in front of me, turns it up, opens his fingers and there is a jelly baby. “Sugar hit.”

I look at him, but there’s no hint of laughter here.

“Sugar hit.” He repeats. “Helps to distracts you.”

Someone calls out: “It took me a whole packet first time.”

Duncan winks and brings out a packet he has been hiding behind his back. “I come prepared.”

 

The next time I looked for her, Petra was dead. It was after the youngest child left home. There were evenings long as days and Robin was always at work. One day, sitting on the sofa watching re-runs of old films and eating chocolate, I realised the truth: Petra had died, and there was a dense, impacted weight in my chest.

Soon after that, it turned out that Robin was not at work after all. He and his new partner, Marielle – so bright, so adventurous, so French, so young – cut their ties (his ties) and bought backpacks, a flat in Paris. I kept the house. The children were pleased about that. It is good for holidays, for them.

I lost my part time job when I stopped turning up. That was six months ago. Recently, I realised that I had not left the house for a month; not spoken to a single person face to face.

I am not stupid, I can read the signs, so I went to the doctors. A busy, competent woman doctor diagnosed depression. Not surprising, she said, in the circumstances. She was kind but not sympathetic. The surgery was conducting a new trial, she explained, treating depression by activities rather than drugs. She showed me a list; group walking sessions at the local park; gym sessions at the sports centre; wild swimming. Then she hesitated and said that, unfortunately, only wild swimming was available.

I took the leaflet about it and went home. At first, the thought of water adding to the weight in my chest put me off. But then I realised water would not actually get into my chest and, obviously, there was not really a dead animal in place of my heart. I wondered if I should have told the doctor about Petra, if this would have counted as a delusion, and whether I would have been sectioned for my own safety. Then I wondered whether this thought was not just self-aggrandisement, and I was just over dramatising. A normal person would just get this all into perspective. I was stupid after all.

 

I have not had a jelly baby since the kids were kids. The sweet dissolves in my mouth as I take two more steps. I hold out my hand and Duncan places another sweet in my palm. Three sweets later, I am up to my middle.

Trish has let go my hand and is patting her shoulders with water. “It helps me prepare for the last bit.”

I cannot do it. I gaze round: Grey clouds layer above, while black water like liquid night stretches away to the reed beds. The peaty smell reminds me of rotting autumn leaves.

Someone calls out “Heron!”

At the end of the lake, a grey sliver unfolds from another dimension huge wings and moves up into the sky. The bird crosses in front of me; a silent geometry of flight before swooping down beyond the reeds. Petra loved herons. I take a step towards it and another.

The mud disappears under my feet, I drop into the lake like the lump that I am. Freezing black wipes out all sensation: No breathing. No hearing. No seeing. I do not know which way is up. Fear and panic burst through me. I kick my legs out and meet nothing. I thrash my arms and feel the drag of the water.

 

In my chest, that deadweight rolls over. Petra gets to her feet, shakes herself in the cold biting blackness. I stop struggling, suspended in the darkness, my heart is thudding, great drumming beats. Petra looks up, I look up and the water is lighter above me.

 

Three strokes bring me to the surface. Hands grab mine and Duncan’s bulk heaves me back onto mud. I can hear myself spluttering. I can hear Trish apologising.

“You can go straight in and dry off.” Trish is saying. “That’s quite alright.”

“Now let’s hold on.” says Duncan. “Let Elizabeth get her breath.”

I’m colder above the water than below. I bend my knees to get my shoulders back under, push my wet hair back out of my eyes, Petra still moving about in my chest, making room for herself.

“Beth.” I say. “Call me Beth.”

I look at the expanse of the lake rippling under the open sky with the wind passing over it, the trees at the far end coming into the fresh green of spring. “I think I’d be ok to swim a bit.” I say.

 

 

 

 

Lost by the Seaside

 

by Sarah Hills

flat white coffee

I don’t look it, but I am lost. And in the way lost people do, I look for signs. I wear out my eyes, for anything that might be significant. I search for prophecies, omens, arrows pointing forward. From the tourist shops opposite the harbour, I find dream catchers and crystals to hang in my windows, chakra stones for the sills. Then I buy mobiles and wind chimes, because I like them anyway, but when the wind blows through the flat, Mel jumps at the tsunami of tinkling glass and bells which builds in a soprano wave from the front windows to a bass grumble of the bamboo tubes by the back door. Mel raises his head from his newspaper then, sighs, until I close the back door to stop the wind searching through.

Since we moved to the flat, I go down to the beach to walk. The golden curve of it stretches out for miles. The waves come in so regularly, like heartbeats, but between every wave, I hear a silence, this kind of pause. Once, I put my fingers on my wrist to count my pulse, breathing in time with the waves, and realised that between every clench of my heart, it also stops before it can clench again - in every heartbeat, I am both alive and dead. Alive, dead, alive, dead, alive-dead-alive-dead. All the time. I’m more wary of the sea now.

Mel can sit and read and read. He reaches zen-like peace of mind from perusal of print. He’ll potter out to his bowls club and down to the second-hand bookshops. I’ll find him with a pile of books and a coffee in one of the new trendy coffee bars – reclaimed mismatched china and hand roasted coffee beans. He is happy. I can see that. Plain as eggs. It takes me by surprise, time after time.

I’d forgotten he could be happy. He trudged so long as a postman – early doors winter and summer, all weathers, cyclical threats of redundancy, constant changes and re-shuffles - that I forgot. I think he had too. Neither of us understood his grumbles, that litany of complaints about work, a rosary of our daily life, rose out of the trudging itself – like steam rising from an overheated, overused engine. Don’t think I didn’t know they called him Moaning Mel at work. It wasn’t a behind the back thing, more a nickname to his face in affection, ‘cos they knew, every one of them, that he would always cover for them. Always go that extra mile, literarily, when one of them couldn’t make it all the way through their round.

What goes around comes around, Mel would say to me. And sometimes it did, that was true. But it seemed to me that Mel got landed with more than he passed around. He’d take the extra hours, work the shifts to cover illness. We always needed the money, of course.

I remember him saying to me one night, packing up his lunchbox for the next day as I put together another meal for his dad or my mum. “It’s never just us, honey, is it?” Three kids – Jon, Mark, Kitty. All out there now with jobs, Jon and Kitty with families as well. Bit of coming and going, but they got there. Kitty had her eldest, Liam, before Jon had left home even. But then we all helped look after Liam when he was such a sickly baby. I held the fort after he died, while Kitty got herself back together. Then there was his dad and my mum. Each slowing down and dying in their own sweet time; not that I begrudge them. What goes around comes around and all that, as Mel says. I was their one-woman social service – arranging meals and carers, their social lives. She had a sharp tongue, my mother. I won’t do it to mine.

We agreed, Mel and me. Retirement and move away.

 

So, here we are in Bridlington. Our house exchanged for a ground floor flat, with a bit put aside for rainy days.

Quiet oozes out of everything here, like a syrup. If I sit long enough, silence fills up the flat, gradually pooling round my ankles, rising to my knees, stomach, pushing against my ribs like a weighted pillow. Mum’s lungs filled with liquid in her last days, and she drowned. With every hard breath I gasp in the sickly silence. I must heave myself up before Mel comes home to find me stricken in the chair.

I don’t know what Mel sees in his bowls and bookshops. There are just old people here queuing up to die, browsing discarded bric-a-brac from the houses of those gone before while they wait.

Mel says I have nursed the dying so long, I am haunted. I tut at him, but I have never told him I see Liam. Always. Since he died. Ten years old, he’d be now. He’s grown. I used to see him at ours and now, since we moved into the flat, when I walk by the sea, I see Liam, curly haired boy, running into the waves, laughing. He doesn’t come out, but I’ll see him run down the beach again. Used to see him running into the roads round our old house, so running into the water seems better.

 

Today, I come back to the flat from shopping for dinner and Mel makes me a pot of tea, pulls out the biscuit tin. I’m placing new Good Luck charm magnets on the fridge, he’s talking to me about Old Joe at his bowling – still playing at 103, spry, prickly and wiry as sea holly. He pats my hand, and my stomach knots before he even opens his mouth.

“If you could be young again, a child even,” he goes on. “What would you want to do?”

I put my cup down too quickly and it catches the saucer rim, some tea spills out. “For God’s sake.”

I am halfway out of the room when Mel says. “You have to retire sometime too. From looking after other people.”

“There’s you.” I retort.

“I don’t need you to look after me.”

No. There’s the rub in all its rawness. After I’ve mopped the split tea, I stomp off to bed, get under the duvet and pretend to sleep. My jaws hurt from the force I use to clench them together and still the tears leak from my closed eyelids and run down my face into the pillow.

 

The next morning, I leave early to walk along the beach. The sea has been rough overnight and left, scattered along the high-water mark, small shells, whole and delicately pink, some still in pairs like minute butterflies. I can see Liam wandering ahead of me picking them up, so I do the same until I have a handful. For heaven’s sake, Eve, I can hear my mother say, you could at least act your age. God, she had a tongue like a piece of barbed wire. The only thing that had value for her was work. “The devil makes work for idle hands.” That was one of her favourite sayings. She worked till the day she had her stroke. 76, she was. I cannot remember a single time I saw her happy.

Halting, I look at my collection of shells. Just things like this can make me happy at least. A few are blushes of deep fuchsia, while others are elegant pale pink teardrops, some single, four sets still paired like wings. Sitting down on the sand, I catch my breath, lining the shells up on one palm, dark to light. Rows of wings and tears. Such beautiful things, tiny and perfect; concentric curved lines, like minuscule waves, a moment of sea frozen in shell. Not sand yet, I think, they are paused, no, suspended in this loveliness on their way from being to not being.

I look round for Liam. Of course, he’s lost interest in shells, now he’s starting his walk into the waves. He turns to me and raises his hand. My heart jolts. He’s never done that before, never looked at me, never communicated in any way. I start to my feet, sliding in the sand as I rush down the beach to him, stumbling, because I don’t take my eyes off him for a moment. He waves, but he’s also stepping backwards into the water. I know I can’t get to him. Know I can’t get across the beach in time. I stop. Liam puts his hand down and smiles at me, the same wind blowing our hair, the same light in our eyes. Then he takes another step back and he’s just gone.

All I can hear is my breath out loud, catching in sobs in my throat. Going to wipe the tears from my face, I realise my hands are still full of shells. It’s crazy, but I can’t drop them. They seem like a gift from both Liam and the sea itself. I cannot let them fall and risk them being crunched into the endless sand.

Slipping one handful into the other, I dig out a tissue to wipe my face and blow my nose while walking to where Liam had been. Standing, staring, just shells and tears between me and the great breadth of the sea, filling all that unseen land, shore to horizon.

I drop the shells into a clean tissue, take off my shoes and socks, push socks and shells carefully into the shoes. The waves are lapping my ankles before their ice chill pushes me back, numbs the burn of grief over my skin. I don’t think Liam wanted me to join him, I think, he wanted me to let him go. It occurs to me, that it was him keeping me company all those years rather than the other way round, him waiting until I was strong enough.

Wandering along the shore, I watch clouds drifting in the sky, merging and forming, dissolving into blue, making endless pictures, while silk sand from further up the beach warms and dries my feet. I wonder if this could be my own zen time - walking in the sunshine, searching for shells, in the company of the sea. I should get a dog. I always wanted a dog. I see myself, walking on this beach every day, getting to know it like the back of my hand.

I don’t know how long I walk, just me, with the sea, beach and sky. Long enough for the horizon to lodge inside my head.

When I start to feel cold, I turn round. All those chakras and wind chimes will have to go to the charity shop. The seashells will line up on a windowsill or they can sit in a bowl of water on the table, where they will gleam in liquid light. At least they won’t bother Mel with any noise. I walk back along the sand, heading home, listening to the rasp of water drawing back from each wave, and it seems to me I have adapted in some way to become part of the sea - the ebb and flow of air in my lungs, the salt essence of the tides in my heart.

Then I think how nice it would be now to sit with a cup of coffee and Mel, eating a warm scone, reading a second-hand book in a café. 

About the author 

Sarah lives in the North of England and has recently started taking her writing seriously.