Attagirl, I think, smiling as she goes.
Lizzie and Josh and her gang have already boarded the bus, and I see Lizzie waving frantically at her through the window, banging on the glass to get her attention. She’s on the top deck – as the cool kids always are – and is making ‘come and sit with us’ gestures through the pane. Aaah, I think. What a sweetie.
Martha looks up at her, gives no response at all, and gets onto the bus. She’s the last one on, and I see her take a seat on her own, on the lower level. I cringe a little inside as I see her snub Lizzie, but know there isn’t much I can do about it.
Instead, I blow out a big breath as I watch the bus pull away, and feel … well, in all honesty, I feel relieved. This in turn makes me feel guilty, so I decide to get out of the car, and go for a walk. Isn’t this one of the reasons I wanted to come here, anyway? The endless paths and the endless cliffs and the endless space? Never mind that I’m so tired and ragged and borderline weepy that I could quite happily fall asleep in the car, and stay there until it’s time to collect Martha at the end of the day. No, that won’t do. I will go for a walk.
The village is small but perfectly formed, I see, as I amble along the narrow pavement. Small terraced houses line the road, along with a handful of shops – a pharmacy, a gift shop that has a 20% sale on conch shells, a butcher, some tea rooms. No book shop, which isn’t surprising but does make me sad. The world needs more book shops. I pass a small bakery, and the Community Hall advertising ‘zumablates’ for the over 60s, and navigate the flower-filled buckets outside the florists. I see a sign for the pet cemetery, which I vow to visit some time when I’m feeling less fragile, like in 2021.
I nod to people as I pass, a bit freaked out by all the ‘good mornings’ and smiles, and follow my nose down towards the coast. I see a hand-painted wooden sign for the Comfort Food Café, and decide that that’s probably where I’d been heading all along. It’s Cherie’s cafe, and Laura manages it, and Willow works there, and basically from what I heard on the day we arrived, it’s the absolute centre of the Budbury universe.
After about ten minutes of walking, I reach a small carpark, next to the bay. The bay is a perfect horse-shoe shape, the September sunlight streaking down onto waves that are racing in to foam over the sand. There are a few holiday-makers left, some with toddlers, some with dogs, all enjoying the last few days of what we could loosely call summer. There’s an ice cream van parked up, a bored-looking lad reading a collection of poetry by Yeats inside the cab. I silently applaud his taste, and start the trek up to the cafe itself.
The path is long but not steep, with low-level steps cut into it and a handrail to hold onto when it starts to feel so high it’s vertigo-inducing. I pause every now and then, and let myself soak up the view. The higher you get, the more the colours change: sea that looked grey and white from land level now looks iridescent, merged shades of blue and green and turquoise, rippling and rolling on its way into the bay.
The clifftops stretch off into the horizon on either side, yellow and red, rock meeting sand, jaggedly rising and falling as they disappear into the distance. I can see people walking along the paths, doing exactly the same as me, and pausing to enjoy the spectacle of the morning sunshine on the water. It’s so quiet as well – it may be the seaside, but it’s not the kind of place you find banana boats or fairground rides; all you can hear is the sound of the seagulls shrieking as they dive, the waves fizzing inland, and the occasional bark of a stick-chasing pooch.
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