The sight of fat, round grapes by the sink, a floury bloomer in the pantry, and a slab of white cheese in the fridge made Laura nauseous. This was the food she’d requested. This was the food that, five minutes ago, she’d been desperate to shovel down her throat. Now the mere idea made her stomach roil. The midwife’s pamphlets had totally lied, and Laura was still bitter about it. Morning—or evening, or afternoon, or midnight—sickness did not fade after the first trimester.
“Alright then,” she murmured, looking down at the swell of her stomach. “What do you fancy?”
The bump remained silent. Typical.
She wandered over to the kitchen sink and ran her sweaty palms over its cool steel. Still fighting the queasy lurch in her gut, Laura glanced out of the window at the stars, then studied the narrow scrap of beach outside, untouched by the high tide.
That was the ocean she saw, winking at her like an old flirt, just beyond the sand. Oh, how she loved the ocean.
“A walk on the beach, perhaps?” she suggested to her own abdomen.
The foetus within held its tongue. Did they have tongues, at this stage? She’d have to consult her pamphlets again.
Oh, whatever. The baby may not have an opinion, but Laura knew exactly what she wanted.
And for the first time in a while, she was free to go for it.
Samir didn’t think he was being spied on.
On the one hand, people were often spied on here in Beesley—especially during the off-season. Folks had too much damned time on their hands. The elderly in particular became vampires in their old age, always thirsty for someone else’s drama.
But on the other hand, whoever had just joined him on the beach was far too noisy to be a spy. Surely, if they were trying to be sneaky, they wouldn’t blunder over the stony shoreline like the world’s loudest bulldozer. And they certainly wouldn’t be tossing pebbles into the silky ink of the ocean with a successive plop, plop, plop that yanked him right out of his evening’s angst-fest.
So they weren’t going to pinch his cheek and call him a lovely boy, and they weren’t going to tell the whole town that Samir Bianchi had been staring out to sea, grim-faced and resentful, like some wannabe Batman. Those were good things. Very good things.
But Samir still wasn’t feeling charitable toward the person who’d intruded on his solitude—and never mind the fact that this was a public beach. It was the middle of the night, for goodness’s sake. A man should be able to brood without interruption on a beach in the middle of the night. An hour or two of self-indulgence wasn’t asking for much.
Clearly the bulldozer disagreed. They came ever closer, ever louder, ever clumsier, until it became suddenly and painfully clear that Samir was going to have to announce his presence. It was dark enough that, if he didn’t, this bulldozer of a human being might just bulldoze him.
“Hey,” he said, his voice breaking the gentle, wave-tinged silence.
“Argh!” the bulldozer said and fell on top of him.
What followed was an alarming series of shrieks, grunts and mumbled apologies that Samir really could’ve done without.
“Bloody hell,” he blurted as the bulldozer collapsed over him like a sack of bricks.
“Oh!” the bulldozer cried. “I’m so sorry!” She—it did seem to be a she—accompanied those words with what felt like a shoulder to his throat.
“Bloody hell!” he spluttered, this time with even greater feeling.
A small storm of sand was kicked up as the two of them shuffled apart like crabs on speed. He felt the grit against his skin, scratching his dry eyes, and even sneaking into his open, panting mouth. Delightful.
Eventually, despite all the scuffling and swearing and shrieking—this bulldozer operated at a rather high pitch—they managed to put a decent amount of space between them. Samir could see the outline of a person in the moonlight, just a few feet away. The gentle whoosh of the wind over the waves should’ve made the silence between them peaceful. Instead, it felt painfully awkward. He should say something, really. The only problem was, he thought his voice box might be damaged. The woman’s shoulder must be made of bloody brick.
“I’m sorry,” she said, the words sudden and disarmingly earnest. She sounded absolutely mortified. In fact, it was more than that; she sounded ready to throw herself down a well. The abject discomfort in her voice was so intense, it was making him uncomfortable.