Sea Glass – Part 2: Colours in the Window

The café by the harbour was small and steamy, with fishing nets on the walls and a jar of lemon curd on every table. Tamsin chose a window seat, and set her bag of sea glass on the sill, sorting the pieces into neat rows of green, blue, brown and white.

Rowan watched her, a cup of strong coffee in his hands, a slice of toast forgotten on his plate.

"You're not eating," said Tamsin.

"I'm distracted by the colours," said Rowan. "Show me the red one again."

She held it up to the light. It glowed like a ruby, rough at the edges and smooth in the middle.

"That one's special," she said. "It came from a bottle my grandfather drank from, on the night he proposed to my grandmother. He told me the sea kept it for them."

Rowan's face softened. "Did they marry?"

"Fifty-two years," said Tamsin. "Until he died, in the front room, with the radio on and the tea going cold."

Rowan was quiet for a long time. Then he set down his coffee.

"Can I tell you what I'm afraid of?" he said.

"Yes."

"That I've spent so long measuring other people's houses that I've forgotten how to live in my own. That I'll go back to my flat in Bristol and find nothing there but plans and cold coffee, and I'll never find a single thing worth keeping on a beach."

Tamsin's heart turned over. She reached across the table and took his hand, rough from the cold water and the shingle.

"Then stay for the next low tide," she said. "And the one after. And let me show you the things worth keeping."

"Can I ask you something?" said Rowan, his voice unsteady.

"Yes."

"Would you let me come back to the beach tomorrow, at six, and every morning this month? Not to find glass. To find you on the shingle, telling me I'm holding the seaweed wrong."

Tamsin laughed, bright and wet-eyed. "Yes," she said. "But only if you bring the red bead back. It's mine now, you know. I've been jealous of it since you picked it up."

"Deal," said Rowan, and grinned for the first time since the story began. "Can I kiss you, Tamsin? Here, in the steamy window, with the fishermen pretending not to look?"

"Yes," said Tamsin. "And if I say stop, we'll go and find a new bead, because I'm not giving you my grandfather's glass without a proper fight."

He leaned across the table slowly, careful of the coffee cups and the lemon curd. His hand came up to cradle her cheek, cool and steady, and he kissed her with a quiet, warm certainty that made her forget the café entirely.

When they parted, both of them were smiling so widely it hurt.

"Green?" asked Rowan.

"Green," said Tamsin. "Very green. Now eat your toast, Rowan, before the tide comes in and takes the best of the harbour."

"The tide is always taking things," said Rowan. "That's the whole point of the beach."

"Then let's go and collect the ones it gives back," said Tamsin, and they walked out into the bright, salt-scented morning, side by side, towards the shingle.