I still feel uneasy about last night. The noise. The blood. I’d stripped off my clothes and stood in the shower, searching every inch of my body for a cut. But it was like it had come from nowhere. And once it had all washed down the plughole, how could I even be sure it had been there?
I’m tempted to tell Paul my concerns. But I don’t want to worry him. He’s got enough on his plate at the moment with Sally. I pause to fasten my ancient parka. Its padding feels like a blanket as the sea air whips into my face.
‘God, it’s freezing,’ I say as I hurry to catch up with Paul. ‘I’d forgotten how cold it gets by the sea.’
‘We’ll be fine once we get a stride on,’ he says. ‘Soon warm up.’
I quicken my step to keep up with him.
‘You sound like my mother,’ I shout, my voice a thin reed fluttering in the searing wind.
‘You calling me an old woman?’ he laughs as the wind almost blows his scarf away. ‘Cheeky mare.’
Climbing up to the wide path that will take us towards the cliffs, we are met by a trail of bright pink mussel shells that crunch underfoot as we walk. I stop to pick one up and marvel at its fuchsia hue. Turning it over in my hands, I lay it in my palm; it looks like a tiny broken heart. I scrape the sand from its centre and place it in my pocket. As we continue up the path I put my hands inside the warm folds of material and rub the coarse shell with my fingers. It is strangely comforting.
Paul has gone striding ahead and I run to join him, the blood pumping vigorously through my body. The air is clean and I drink great gulps of it down into my lungs as I go, feeling myself opening up with every breath I take. Up ahead, I see Paul standing on a narrow wooden bridge that connects the path to the steps that lead to the clifftops.
‘I remember this bit,’ I say as I catch up with him and we climb up the steep steps into a narrow country lane fringed with bracken. ‘It always used to scare me.’
‘Why’s that?’ asks Paul.
He has fallen in behind me and I can hear the quick puffs of his shallow breath as he walks.
‘It’s just so enclosed,’ I say. ‘It’s like, now, I can feel you behind me, but that’s fine because I know it’s you. But if I were here alone and felt someone walking behind it would spook me. There are too many curves, too many hiding places for people to jump out of.’
‘What, you mean people like Alexandra?’ says Paul, putting on a silly voice. ‘Woo, woo.’
‘Stop it,’ I say, without looking back, ‘or I’ll summon her. Then you’ll be sorry.’
I am relieved when the path opens up into a wide stretch of meadow and we pick up our pace. Gorse bushes cluster amongst the grass, with tiny shimmering yellow flowers dotted across their stubby fingers like jewels. In the distance a cockerel crows and I stop to listen.
‘The farms,’ says Paul, nodding his head to the east. ‘There are loads of them beyond the hedge.’
I smile as I remember going to visit the farm with Mum. We got a guided tour from the farmer’s wife and ended up having our tea there. I think Mum had been to school with her. We left with a basketful of eggs and cheese and fresh milk. Mum was so happy that day; genuinely happy, not like the pretend smile she wore when we went to the beach.
The low groan of a cow answers the cockerel’s call and as we walk on I think of my mother, the country girl who had spent her life trapped in suburbia. She deserved more than what she got.
‘There they are,’ cries Paul.
He puts his hand out and points towards the shoreline. ‘The towers. Aren’t they spectacular?’
I look up and see the two towers of Reculver rising ominously out of the cliffs, the only remains of the Roman fort that had once guarded the bay from unwanted intruders.
‘The sisters,’ I whisper as we start to walk again with the towers as our guide. ‘That’s what we used to call them. I’d forgotten how beautiful they are.’
The wind pummels our faces as we walk towards the towers and I pull my hood up round my face to shield it from the biting cold. The site is heaving with day trippers and we have to wriggle our way through groups of tourists and harassed parents who are guiding their small children away from the edge of the cliff. It is a lot busier than it was when I was a child. Back then the only attractions had been the towers and the beach below where the bouncing bomb had been tested in 1943. Now there is a visitor information centre with a shop selling T-shirts and mugs and bottles of striped humbugs, and further up the hill an ice-cream van is doing a roaring trade from the queue of small children snaking its way around the path.