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inMondadori
Psychological novel with deep
characterization.
Julia is an attractive single mother in her early forties with a
grown up daughter. Out of apathy she marries a wealthy previous
suitor, and gives up her job as a school-teacher and her financial
independence to enjoy a comfortable life with him. But for years she
has kept a deep secret from her youth, and so have others around
her. Eventually the moment where they must reveal themselves strikes
unexpectedly, bringing a wild storm into their lives. Nothing will
ever be the same, but in that very moment Julia awakens to realize
that love and trust are there for her, where she had least expected
them to be, and she can finally enjoy life to the full.
The coast was being battered by the first
full-blown storm of autumn.
From her fourth floor window she could see across the wide bay to
the town and the cranes of the small harbour beyond it. Safe and
warm in the stillness of the apartment, she watched as the sea raged
towards the yielding trees and grasses of the wetlands. The last
traces of summer were being blown away, reducing the modest south
coast resort to an abandoned bleakness; abandoned by youthful
visitors, but not the elderly, who would continue, once the weather
calmed, to mooch along the promenade and into the half-empty gift
shops for several more weeks, in dribs and drabs, sensibly clothed,
slightly disgruntled with the leftovers of the holidays season.
Today there was not a soul in sight and few cars ventured along
beneath the sea wall, a sturdy construction that had been built
several years earlier to prevent pebbles from being hurled onto the
road by such mighty seas.
There were strong cross-currents in the
bay. Far out on the murky horizon, waves boiled and tumbled from
east and west, colliding in mountains of grey water before hurling
themselves shore wards. Pebbles became heaped at the base of the
wall, which was an extension of the promenade edging the town; a
pleasant walk in clement weather with seats for the weary and those
who enjoyed watching, rather then participating in, the antics on
the beach below. At the town end, where the promenade was wide, the
beach was of fine yellow sand sloping gently into shallow water,
ideal for paddling and messing about. Serious swimmers and boating
enthusiasts favoured the steeply shelving pebbles on the east side
of the amusement pier, where the waves on fine days rolled
seductively beneath bobbing heads.
The world in turbulent movement before her suddenly made her feel
dizzy; the result no doubt of gazing too fixedly at one point. She
shut her eyes for several seconds, before looking once again at a
certain spot midway along the wall. There, every so often, in what
appeared to be a random rhythm, a massive wave, made up of many
smaller ones which had embraced far out in the bay, roared onto the
beach, swept across it and leapt at the wall, as if determined to
breach man’s puny efforts at defence. Thwarted, it shattered and
fell back into the seething tide, leaving an even larger mound of
gleaming stones.
If anyone were foolish enough to venture along the top of the wall
that day, surely they would not survive such a furious onslaught.
Sensible people would use the bus or walk along the footpath beside
the road, sheltered from the blast. Only a person of stubborn
habits, arrogant in pride, revelling in their physical fitness,
would battle out from the town along that exposed rampart in the
teeth of such a gale. Julia was waiting, intently watching for that
very person.
A single-decker bus appeared followed by a slow convoy of three
cars. They approached and gradually disappeared from her arc of
vision. The bus had not stopped at the shelter next to the car park
belonging to the block of flats. She had not expected that it would.
She stirred slightly in anxious excitement and wrapped the long
cardigan more firmly around her slender body, hugging herself
protectively. One of the monster waves was forming out near the
horizon beneath a black cloud, which had joined the madcap race to
the land. Faster the wave sped, gathering force and height as it
drove nearer, rolling beneath a head of turbulent white water, her
mounting excitement riding with it. It roared onto the beach,
herding the groaning pebbles, flinging itself upwards to explode
high in the air against the wall, before subsiding with a mighty
crash.
Julia shuddered with anticipation. Leaves and litter were flying
past the window, blown inland with the clouds. A grubby plastic
carrier bag, a grotesque balloon with ears, wrapped itself around
the wrought iron railings of the balcony, clinging on as if for dear
life, writhing and flapping like a wraith in torment. Julia became
irritated by it. It was distracting her from her vigil. Her eyes
kept going back to it until she could stand it no longer. She
wrenched apart the heavy glass doors allowing the wind to tear past
her into the living room, blasting noise and cold air into the
carefully controlled environment. It tore at her hair and clothing,
forcing the breath back into her lungs, trying to whip her up and
away with the rest of the detritus. Gasping, she braced herself
against the blast and managed the few paces necessary to reach the
railings. Hanging onto them with one hand, Julia fought to release
the bag with the other, but as fast as she untwisted, so it twisted
again, slippery and cold in her numbing fingers. At last it was
free. It tore away on the instant, sailing up and across the road
towards the flattened sedges of the narrow strip of salt-marsh, like
a giant bird in the leaden sky, at the mercy of the wind. It would
come to rest sometime, as everything must, one more piece of rubbish
in a landscape littered with dead things.
Julia regained her post, once more calmly immured behind
double-glazing. She scanned the length of the beach and there, there
at last, was the object of her vigil. She was certain of it. A
sudden flurry of raindrops pattered against the glass, annoyingly
blurring the scene for several minutes. Then she was able to spy, at
the far end of the curving wall, a black comma, slowly resolving
into a human shape as it approached, leaning into the wind, wound
about by dark clothing. Even at that distance, Julia recognised the
familiar defiance in the posture. The figure kept lifting its face
to take the full blast of the lashing air, when most people would
have plodded on wearily with their eyes to the ground. (...)