Here on the headland the wind shaves the skin from my face with a frozen blade, my eyes watering a little from the salt. I am searching the view before me, but today there are no boats or ships and it's too rough for the regatta dinghies which, spring and summer, string the sea like inverted bunting. The horizon simply blends one grey to another.
I notice the waves are building further out, toppling early before rising again. They look like jilted brides falling over their dresses; trailing their sea-foam trains.
Would she have come after me back then?
Hands fisted deep into my coat, hat pulled hard to eyebrows and scarf over mouth, I tramp onward and down through the dying bracken. A foot plunges too deep into the mud and sudden cold hits my toes - my walking boots need waterproofing. Tomorrow I will have to wear the wellies although I dislike their thin soles.
Below the dogs have already made it to the sand; two Labradors, one black, one yellow, loping crazy circles about one-another, in and out of the shallows. Now they both stop and plunge their snouts deep into the line of drying bladderwrack that marks the hide tide; Whitby - as in jet - suddenly up and off with a prize, Amber in determined pursuit. Through my binoculars I see they have the carcass of a gull which, a wing each, they are tearing apart in a vile tug-o-war.
She got Will and Alice. I got the dogs.
Today I'm going to ignore the stringy corpse and let them play their game. A few sticks into the sea will rinse the stink from their mouths and coats, but she always insisted that I washed and shampooed them too. Amber developed a skin complaint, when it spread to her tail we had fans of spattered blood all up the pristine walls of the house. She said it was mange, said it was the last straw - they had to go. Funny really - she was the one that brought them home. I can see her now in the doorway, a puppy under each arm, telling me they were to be called Yin and Yang. Oh . . . God.
The vet told me it was dermatitis, most likely a reaction to the shampoo - too many baths stripping the natural oils from Amber's coat.
She said I was lying, trying to get out of the chore. I pointed out that they were our dogs.
But, of course, then they were my dogs.
This started out as an exercise in imagery but back-story started to creep in there.
