her so she could eat using one hand. It all depended on his shifts at the centre. A few of the days he’d come in the morning, on others a couple of hours in the afternoon. She could use her right hand a bit better now, so holding a spoon or fork was easier and she could lift the kettle if it wasn’t filled too full.
Most evenings she’d sit on the bench in the garden, listen to the gulls, the laughter as beachgoers walked back on the coastal path. She’d catch snippets of conversation as they passed the cottage; sometimes the light rumble of the traffic on the other side slid in and out of her hearing as she read a book on her lap. She never asked where he was in the evenings; she was just glad of his help in the day.
It was a Thursday morning – one of Greg’s days off from the centre – and they’d finished their fresh chocolate croissants. Greg was checking something on his phone, so Maddie seized a lull in the conversation; it was something she’d been building up to. She didn’t know how he’d react.
‘I found some photos the other day – of uni, in one of the storage boxes,’ she said. Greg glanced at her quickly.
‘Oh yes?’
‘Hold on and I’ll get them.’ She got up and wandered into the lounge and reached for the little flip-file of photos on the mantelpiece and took it through to the kitchen.
And they sat, side by side, flicking through their shared history – a masked ball; Freshers’ Week with bowler hats (why?); arm in arm at a beer festival; one of Greg at Widemouth Bay; Maddie in a mint-green embroidered summer dress, the hummingbird scarf loosely round her neck, licking a vanilla ice cream.
‘I remember that dress,’ Greg said, touching the photo. Suddenly, he pushed his chair back and gathered up their plates and put them on the draining board with a clunk. He turned around. ‘Shall we get outside? Go for a walk?’
She looked out the kitchen window and could just see the bluey-green sea sparkling in the distance. It was a hot July day; she should be grateful to get some fresh air and take Taffie for a proper walk. The sky was cobalt-blue and cloudless. It looked lovely out there. But she realised how tired she was. Something was holding her back. It was as if the house was her cocoon. She felt safe inside, didn’t have to worry about anything else. Her world had shrunk significantly.
‘Sure, OK, but also—’ She felt embarrassed.
‘What?’
‘Well, I need to wash my hair.’ She screwed up her nose and put her bandaged hand up to her messy bun. She’d been managing in the shower with just one hand to wash her hair, the other tied up in a protective plastic casing so it didn’t get wet – but the whole thing took forever and she could never rinse her hair properly. It was a state.
He walked over and stood in front of her. ‘I’ll help you – OK? But let’s go for a walk first. We can do it then when we get back.’
She was a heartbeat away from saying ‘like old times’ but stopped herself just in time.
*
Half an hour later, they had Taffie zigzagging along the beach, looking for new smells and tiny crabs, sniffing at rocks and digging up bits of sand, his little tail wagging madly. Maddie was carefully making her way across a few larger boulders as the tide was out.
‘Let’s walk down to the shore. It’s flatter there,’ Greg suggested.
They walked for about ten minutes and she took big lungfuls of the sea air, smelt the soft salty breeze and was glad of her scarf wrapped around her neck. Even though it was July, there was a brisk wind, but it felt good to be outside. Her head felt clearer and she enjoyed the easy silence of walking next to Greg.
They carried on to the end of the bay, their footsteps in time with one another, and she looked out to the water, at how it glistened in the sun like someone had thrown a fishing net sewn with diamonds over the top of it.
A gull soared overhead and she stopped to admire how it swooped and swerved down to the sparkling waves. Her scarf fluttered in the breeze and Greg glanced at it, as its chiffon arm snaked out in front of her, twisted, then curled behind her