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Although the sky was a deep blue, the air was growing distinctly autumnal. From her vantage point, Anna watched the fair-haired man and the two little children. She had watched them for most of the week that she had been there and knew that the little girl was
10 and called Ellie. The boy was five and the man, their dad, referred to him as Mikey. He seemed a lovely dad and took great pains in building huge
sandcastles and placing brightly colored paper flags at the top of each one.
Anna unwittingly sighed deeply and pulled her fleece around her shoulders. The summer had arrived late this year...and had departed all of a sudden.
The little bay was nearly empty, and it was only mid afternoon.
None of this seemed to matter to the little children with their dad. They squealed when he threw droplets of cols seawater at them, and they giggled when the little girl got ice cream on the tip of her nose.
Oh for those halcyon days. Days where the sun shone eternally and little cartoon-like birds flew against a backdrop of aqua.
Why did people have to grow up? Life got so complicated that one didn't get time to enjoy it. The smell of the flowers, the scent of newly mown
grass, it was a crime that these things paled into insignificance.
Anna thought of her childhood. She had been an only child, and whilst her parents had sat in their deckchairs on the little promenade, she had played happily in the sand. She had been the princess of the beach, and in the afternoons when her mother had taken a little nap, her father had met up with her.
How she had adored their time together. Sometimes the two of them had barely spoken to each other, but they knew that their love spoke volumes.
Father and daughter playing happily on the beach for hours. Anna hadn't needed anyone or anything else.
Of course, once the summer holidays were over with, you had Christmas. Wasn't it strange that when one was a child, the year consisted of Christmas, Easter,
Summer, then Christmas again.
Bad things didn't seem to exist, until you reached maturity; then a whole sack
load of 'bad things' seemed to hit you full on! Anna as a child had never had to experience the harsh realities of
life, until now.
Shadows were starting to form now, and the wind had begun to whip up the fine white sand.
The little girl had apparently got some sand in her eyes, and for a while, Anna felt a little perturbed.
She needn't have worried though; the dad got hold of her and gently got rid of the offending grain.
Anna felt tears prick at her eyes as he popped the little boy on his shoulders and grabbed his daughter's hand in his own.
Despite herself, Anna felt a flicker of warmth in the pit of her stomach. This morning she had felt that
low; everything had seemed bleak.
A career had removed everything worth having from her grasp, and her personal relationship had suffered... she had thought irretrievably.
Anna thought of her partner, the father of her children. He was so immensely busy with his career that everything else was pushed into a closet.
The two of them were, she knew now, as bad as each other. Instead of appreciating all that they did have, they were ruining it in their quest for promotion, high salaries etc.
She watched as the dad and his children clambered up the shallow rock to face where she was seated outside a little seaside cottage.
The man playfully threw a slimy piece of seaweed at her, and she instinctively jumped...the two children looked to see what her reaction would be!
Anna threw back her head and laughed out loud. The girl, then the little boy giggled and ran in doors noisily.
The man...that sweet dad who had bestowed so much precious time on his children, walked over to where she sat.
"I've missed you," he said quietly
"Let's try harder Anna, I do love you."
Anna knew, at that very moment that they would be all right...very, very all right!
They had found each other again.
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