August Bank Holiday weekend, 1984 - Missing Words (Pt 2)
It's Sunday morning, and still the August Bank Holiday weekend. Jenny has spent the night at a B&B on the western edge of the Isle of Wight. She has just one more day to find Deborah, but is there, perhaps, something else she's looking for as well?
~
The old road from The Needles to
Freshwater Bay rolls along in waves as if the land were a solid sea, cresting
and falling with a frozen tide. The sea, itself, has turned a steely grey,
whitecaps punctuating its surface as it churns in the wind. As she joins the
A3055 again, following along the southern coast, she catches glimpses of the
chalk cliffs crumbling into the waves. The whole island, it seems, is being
consumed by the sea.
She keeps to the edge of the road,
squeezed between the grassy verge and the last of the summer holiday traffic. Now
and then, as she climbs the long hill to the top of Military Road, moving
slowly in her lowest gear, cars grow impatient and push past too close. She keeps
her eyes focused on the tarmac and presses on, holding a straight line and
holding her nerve. A string of scooters follows her uphill, overtaking her,
one-by-one, and toot their horns in encouragement as they slowly pull past. Jenny
has learned to ride the hills now, learned when to shift down and when to shift
up, and how to use the momentum of the downhills to carry her up the next
incline. And with the wind behind her, she no longer needs to stop and push.
As she reaches the top and picks up speed, she shifts into a higher gear and soon she is racing along the top of the cliffs. Nothing and no one passes her now. Over her shoulder, the Channel spreads wide. Out there is France, and beyond France is Spain, and beyond Spain is the whole continent of Africa. She tries to imagine these other worlds, tries to imagine herself in them, on her own and with Simon. If she asked him, would he go?
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