It was caught by the spike of a barbed-wire fence, where it flapped and rustled, demanding release, until it puffed up again and was unfettered by the wind. It blew over the Downs, past Old Smoker, skimming the tops of the beech trees and the wooden roofs of Milkwood Stables. There, the offshore breeze buffeted the bag inland to the heath and flew it over the sandy paths, boggy patches, and stunted trees. And where the land rose up to the Agglestone, the white bag was captured by the thorny stalks of a gorse bush, and when the wind yanked it again, it ripped and remained there, pinned in place. The breeze moved on, flowing around the rock, lifting gritty particles, scraping them over the limestone, flattening the boxer’s nose even further and smoothing out the etched graffiti.
The woman came around the Agglestone and faced into the wind. It blew her straw-coloured hair about her face and she pushed it out of her eyes with the back of her wrist and then caught the strands in her fist, as if to get an uninterrupted view. Laid out before her was a woven cloth of purple heath and gorse rolling down to the glittering sea, and in the distance the rooftops of Spanish Green.