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against the patio glass. ‘What is this?’ Out ahead the garden
now stretched some hundred metres or so downhill into the darkness.
And then there was the cottage, at the edge of the cliff side. I
could see light coming from a window.
    I slid open the
doors and jumped down onto the grass. A strong, salty sea breeze
hit me hard across the face. I ran downhill against the wind,
towards the cottage. Now I was closer, I could see smoke rising
from the chimney, and someone moving across the lit window.
    I wasn’t sure
if they had seen my approach.
    As the cottage
neared, I realised just how close to the edge of the cliff it was.
It was barely a few metres away from a vertiginous drop down into
the sea. Waves crashed and smashed on the rocks below.
    I turned back
towards the cottage and rapped on the door. I heard scraping of a
chair across a floor, and the sound of footsteps coming closer.
    The door was
yanked open.
    ‘James?’ I
said, as my husband looked back at me vaguely. ‘What are you doing
here?’
    ‘Waiting for
you,’ he replied, unsmiling. He stepped towards me, but something
about his manner made me take an instinctive step back. I realised
I was too close to the cliff’s edge to retreat any further, and
wobbled on the spot. Suddenly the sound of the crashing waves
seemed deafening.
    ‘James, you’re
scaring me. Can we just go inside?’
    I heard the cry
of the seagull, which whirled overhead.
    James smiled,
but it wasn’t a smile that I recognised. ‘This is such a perfect
spot to end it all.’
    ‘Please, James,
let’s just go inside the cottage.’ I attempted to step back towards
him, but he met me halfway, bringing his hands up, palms facing
me.
    ‘Time to end
the pain.’ He stated. ‘The pain for both of us.’
    I shook my
head. ‘We’ve got through the bad times. We can move forward now,
you, me and Grace.’
    He shook his
head ruefully. ‘No, it’s just you and me now.’
    Anger and fear
flared in equal measure, as a particularly strong gust of wind
buffeted me, forcing me to fight my ground. ‘What have you done
with her?’
    ‘Come here,
George.’ He took another step forward, and then pushed out with
both hands, sending us both flying over the edge, into the
abyss.
    I woke in a
panic, totally disorientated. But then there was intense relief,
when I realised that I had fallen asleep at the breakfast table. On
the table was my completed list of items to take on the holiday.
The pen had rolled off the table’s surface and lay on the floor. I
bent down to pick it up.
    Tap!
    This time it
was real. But I wasn’t going to stop and find out what was making
the noise. Instead I ran back upstairs, sliding under the covers
and wrapping my arms around James, who was still sleeping soundly.
I considered waking him, and telling him what I had heard
downstairs. But by the time I had weighed up the pros and cons of
disturbing his slumber, I’d fallen asleep.
     
    ***

    Despite my
disrupted night, my body clock woke me early and I had time to
shower before feeding Grace. As I watched her sucking on the
bottle, I thought back to the dream. It had seemed so real. And
then there was the tapping sound that I had heard upon waking.
Maybe that noise, whatever its cause, had entered my subconscious
when I’d fallen asleep. My busy brain had then found its own
explanation for the tapping, merging it with the holiday, which of
course was the last thing I had been thinking about before falling
asleep.
    You also didn’t
need to be a dream doctor to explain why I had dreamt about James
pushing me over the edge of the cliff. No matter how hard I tried
to push away the fears that came from what I thought I’d heard over
the monitor, they were still there.
    ‘Hi,’ James
said, standing at the door to Grace’s room, rubbing his forehead
sleepily with the palm of his hand. He was still in his pyjamas,
and his hair was messy from sleep. ‘You were obviously up bright
and early.’ He moved across and touched