Winter at Pretty Beach by Polly Babbington (best affordable ebook reader TXT) 📗

As she sat there, dead still, she had a foreboding feeling that this wasn’t going to be something that was going to get better very fast.

***

It hadn’t taken much for Sallie to leave the room - the nurse had come back shortly afterwards to say that visiting hours were nearly over, moving around the bed efficiently without making a sound or disturbing Nina and smiling at Sallie, whispering that it was time for her to go.

Sallie walked out of the hospital as more freezing rain lashed down onto the pavements and cold air bit through her coat. When a gust of wind nearly blew her over, she stood still and held her face up to the rain letting its iciness wash down her face. She tried to focus on the positives - the fact that Nina was being cared for brilliantly, the fact that she’d got back quickly without too many delays and the fact that Nina had not only recognised her but spoken to her too - but seeing her in the blue hospital gown surrounded by the white metal bed and hundreds of screens Sallie felt pessimistic at best.

She moved back under cover of the ambulance bay roof and got out her phone checking the transport times. She would be able to make the last ferry if she walked quickly down the hill, there were a couple of taxis down in the town and then just as she was about to shut her phone up she saw that there was a bus to Pretty Beach in thirteen minutes. She decided to walk back into the hospital, get a hot drink and take the bus home.

On the road home to Pretty Beach Sallie sat at the top of the bus at the front, staring out the window as the bus driver took the twists and turns of the coast road with ease. A couple of teenagers sat right at the back giggling quietly and an older couple who had clearly been out for a few drinks were chatting about their upcoming holiday. Sallie felt strangely detached from the world, from the ride on top of the bus, from what was going on in the hospital and from the fact that she had just flown across the Atlantic in the First Class cabin of a very big aircraft. It was almost as if she was looking down at a petite, blonde, woman sitting on the top of a bus going around the bends of a road by the sea.

‘Love, love, you need to get off, this one terminates here!’ The bus driver called up the stairs and Sallie jumped back to life. Had she fallen asleep sitting up? Disorientated she gathered her bag, scarf and little suitcase and clambered down the tight stairs of the bus.

Just as she was stepping off the bottom of the stairs she stumbled on the wheel of the case and hit the floor of the bus, her hands taking her weight as she fell down. The bus driver quickly scrambled out of the cab and started to help her up.

‘Lord! That was a tumble! Are you okay?’ He asked, grabbing her elbow and helping her up.

‘Oh yes, yes, sorry,’ Sallie replied as she smoothed down her jumper and looked at her thumb which felt like it had been pulled out of its socket. ‘I’ve had a very long day including a flight from America. I need to get home.’

‘Not a nice night for it, love. You got someone who can pick you up from here then?’

‘Oh no, it’s fine thank you. I live just down there, along the laneway. All good.’

‘Ahh well, lucky duck you are then, living down there near the sea - best you get yourself home and in the warm. Forecast is saying the possibility of another storm coming Pretty Beach’s way in the next few days - touch and go whether it’s going to be tonight.’

Chapter 38

Sallie gritted her teeth as she keyed in the number to the keypad on the barn door of the Boat House. Cold, tired and now shivering as the icy rain soaked through her jeans, she needed her own bed, a hot shower and a sit down on her own sofa, in her own sitting room sounded like bliss. The smell of the hospital, the aeroplane, the bus and the various meals she’d had on the run seemed to be all around her - in her hair, in her clothes and on her hands.

She started unwinding the scarf from her neck, pulled off her coat and had removed her blazer all by the time she’d reached the top of the stairs and stepped into the apartment. The wind whistled in under the French doors from the deck and driving rain hit the window panes. She shivered, pressed the app on her phone to turn on more lights and walked over to the pot belly stove and opened it up. It was already laid and waiting to be lit. Silently saying a thank you for the organisation that was Ben, a few minutes later she shut the doors on roaring fires in both the sitting room and her bedroom and wistfully wished that Ben was back too.

She stood and looked around at the apartment - she’d forgotten how beautiful it was, forgotten just how lucky she was to have this new life by the sea. Leaning on the old windowsill by the wood burner, looking down past the two linen sofas out the doors, Sallie gazed out the back to the boats bobbing around out on the water. One of the seaplanes glinted in the moonlight and the beam from the lighthouse flashed in the distance. She pulled up one of the sash windows an inch, the sea air blowing in, the sound of the jetty creaking with the rise and fall of the waves and the boats tugging against their moorings.

She took a stack of thick white towels into the bathroom, pulled back the