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Sunny Days and Sea Breezes
Author: Carole Matthews

Chapter One

 


The ferry slips out of the port at Southampton and heads out into the choppy, grey waters of the Solent. The sky hangs low, malevolent and brooding, as grey as the sea, the peaks of washed-out clouds mirroring the white-tipped waves. I sit outside, alone on the rear deck – the only one foolish enough to face the inclement weather. The threat of rain whips in on the sea air and I wish I’d worn a coat more appropriate for the falling temperature. This is smart, serviceable one for popping between city meetings, not for facing down the elements. The wind is finding all the gaps around my neck, up my sleeves, and cashmere isn’t known for its waterproof qualities. But I left in a hurry and the last thing on my mind was my choice of wardrobe. Maybe it should have been. As it was, I just slung as much as I could in a couple of bags and left.

It’s the end of March and there are rows and rows of empty bench seats which I’m sure are better utilised in the summer crossings. Now, long before the start of the holiday season, the ferry is probably only half full, if that. A few people brave the cold and come out to look over the rails towards the dwindling view of the port behind us, but soon hurry back inside to the fuggy warmth of the onboard café. I bought a sandwich there, but it looks beyond grim and I can’t face eating it. I could throw it to one of the cawing gulls that shadow the ferry, but they look huge and menacing and I feel so light, so insubstantial, so irrelevant, that they might lift me away entirely instead of just taking my disgusting sandwich.

While I further contemplate the many inadequacies of my stale-looking BLT, we pass the magnificent, floating city of the Queen Elizabeth – a Cunard liner in posh livery heading somewhere much more exotic than I am, no doubt. Yet, somehow, I still have the sense that I’m escaping. Perhaps there is no set distance-to-escapee ratio. A mile might be as good as a thousand, if you just want to leave everything behind you. I’m hoping less than twenty miles will do the job, as it takes in both a stretch of sea and an island destination. OK, it’s not exactly Outer Mongolia, but that has to be worth something.

The Solent is a busy motorway of water, and vessels of all shapes and sizes bob, zip or lumber along beside us. The Red Jet speeds past and I know that I could have taken that, a quicker way to the Isle of Wight, but I wanted to feel the distance growing more slowly, the space opening up between me and my old life.

It sounds as if I know what I’m doing, as if there was a plan. But I don’t and there wasn’t. I only know that I had to get away to a place where no one knows me, where I don’t keep having the same conversation over and over, where I don’t have to talk at all, where no one looks at me with pity and thinks ‘Poor Jodie’.

For something to do, I abandon my sandwich on the bench and cross to one of the rails, looking out to sea. I can’t tell you if it’s port or starboard as I’m a confirmed landlubber – but it’s most definitely one or the other. The wind whips my long hair across my face and for once, I’m glad that I haven’t spent money on an expensive blow-dry.

A few minutes later, the door behind me bangs and a hardy smoker joins me. Though he nods in my direction, he keeps his distance as he puffs away. I wish I smoked. It’s years since I had a cigarette – a teenage flirtation – and I didn’t much care for it then. Yet I’m tempted to pluck up the courage to blag one from him. I want to feel something, even if it’s just burning in my lungs. However, before I can find my voice, he takes a deep drag, throws his butt into the water below and, with a theatrical shiver, disappears inside. Not as hardy as he looked, then.

Alone again, I stare down at the churning wake of the boat, mesmerised, listening to the deep thrum of the engines, feeling the vibration beneath my feet. My phone rings and I take it out of my pocket, even though I already know who it is. Sure enough, Chris’s number is on the screen so I let it go straight to voicemail. I don’t want to speak to my husband now. I don’t want to speak to anyone. What would happen if I dropped my phone into the sea? I hold it over the rail while I think, dangling it precariously. If it sank into the depths of the ocean would I, Jodie Jackson, simply cease to exist? Would I be so off-grid that no one could find me? No more Twitter, no more Instagram, no more WhatsApp. It sounds too appealing. If my phone rings again now, I’m going to throw it into the sea. I am. But I wait and wait and my phone, for once, stays silent. I switch it to mute and, still reluctant to give it a reprieve, put it back into my pocket. I suppose that I might need it for an emergency.

I try not to think, to keep my head empty as the sea slides by below me. And it nearly works. Behind me there’s a shriek and two gulls are on the bench fighting over my cast-off sandwich, having plucked it from its cardboard packet. I don’t like to tell them that they’d probably be better off eating the box. The funnel belches black smoke and covers them in smuts of soot but they are too focused on the limp lettuce and the white, slimy fat on the bacon to care.

Then a sea fret rolls in and shrouds everything in mist, taking away any semblance of a view. I’m going to arrive at my destination engulfed in thick fog – both physically and metaphorically.

The ferry crossing is barely an hour long and, too soon, we’re docking in Cowes. I’m sure it’s usually a bustling place, but not today. The scene that greets me looks as if it’s been filmed in monochrome. Even the colourful flags on the little sailing boats that line the entrance to the harbour are failing to compete with the mist, the forbidding light, and are bleached out to grey. Alabaster sand meets the silver sea, joins the battleship sky.

I came here on holiday as a child, just the once. I must have been seven or maybe eight. I remember playing on the beach with my older brother, Bill, burying our dad up to the neck in sand and sitting in deckchairs eating fish and chips from greasy paper. But that’s all. After that we went to Spain every year. I don’t remember much about that either. People say that the Isle of Wight is still like Britain was forty years ago. That sounds perfect to me. If only I could wind time back to then. I’d be two, would have the whole of the world ahead of me, and could make very different life choices.

 

 

Chapter Two

 


At the port, I take a taxi and look out of the window as we bump across the island to my destination. The driver is determinedly chatty. ‘First time in the Isle of Wight, love?’

‘Yes.’

‘Business? Holiday?’

‘Yes.’ How can I explain that it’s neither one nor the other?

‘It’s a great place. If you’re looking for some tips on how to enjoy yourself, I’m your man.’

‘Thanks.’

In theory, if I keep giving one-word answers, he’ll stop speaking. After a few more futile attempts, he does, and I sink into my seat in silence. I’m glad he has the heater on full blast so it’s cosy and warm, which thaws me out after my freezing journey.

It looks pretty enough here. Green. Lots of green. But then, compared to where I live in Inner London, so are most places. After a short while, we crest a hill and there’s rough layby marked Viewpoint.

‘Can we stop here, please?’

The driver pulls in. ‘Do you want an ice-cream?’

‘No.’ The lone van looks as if it has few customers today. ‘I’d just like to look for a moment.’

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