Light is fading fast from the biting February afternoon as the double-decked bus accelerates away from the last of the scattered cottages of the small cliff-top village.
The bus gathers speed, begins to buck and twist along the narrow country lane that snakes away from the sea, and Clarrie Evans, settling hurriedly into a front seat, sways erratically with the motion as she fumbles at the buttons of her heavy winter coat with fingers numbed by the cold. Finally undone, she pats at her lap and Abby, needing no second bidding, climbs up and into her mother’s inviting warmth.
With her daughter clinging close to her, Clarrie manages a last troubled glance through the misting window and down to the great arc of the bay below. Tearing her eyes and thoughts quickly away, she turns to Abby.
‘Come here, lovely,’ she says, drawing her closer still.
For long moments they shiver, shudder, rock tightly together; laughing, almost crying with the aching cold. Clarrie then sets to work on Abby’s arms and hands; rubbing vigorously. She can feel, almost smell, the chill damp in the fabric of her daughter’s coat. She feels it too on Abby’s silky black hair when she straightens her pony-tail and brushes lightly at her fringe with her fingertips.
‘OK now?’ she says, knowing she’s not.
Abby nods dutifully, her teeth still chattering.
Anxious not to miss the bus, they’d arrived too early at the stop high above the bay and had stood for almost an hour in the insistent wind that came whispering urgently from the sea below. As they’d waited, Clarrie had lifted Abby up and into her arms as often as she could. But small as she is, at five years old, she’d been too heavy to hold for long.
Alone at the bus stop, they’d tried stamping their feet and singing at the tops of their voices; hand in gloved hand, they’d tried running across the ne. . .
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