Beatrice was loathe to leave her spot on the rock with its gentle sea breeze, and she was hot after the long scramble, so she stretched her legs out in front of her, staring at the bay and the grey mountains enclosing it in a broken circle. The gap between the band of mountains far in the distance opened up into an endless stretch of calm blue sea. The impression that the whole vista gave her was of being held in the palm of a hand.
In and out went the waves and in and out flowed Beatrice’s breath.
‘I’ve got time for a paddle,’ she told herself, deciding to clamber over the last few feet of rocks and down onto the beach, where she kicked her shoes off and immediately regretted it.
‘Oww!’
The white coral shards that made up the beach were razor-like in their sharpness. She picked her way gingerly to the water’s edge, letting the cool water soothe her skin. ‘In for a penny,’ she told herself as she rolled her trouser legs up into shorts so she could have a proper dip.
The quiet exhilaration of the cold water on her skin was broken by the buzz from her phone. ‘No way?A signal!’
Warmth flooded her chest. It would be Angela checking on her. She could snap pictures of the beautiful bay and of her feet under clear, cool water and maybe her sister would be convinced that she was doing all right at last. It wouldn’t be totally accurate, but it would, at least, be comforting for her. She peered at the screen, but the message wasn’t from Angela at all. It was from Rich.
The house is sold, exchanging in a fortnight so you’ll get your half soon. You’ll need to clear your things, sorry. Hope you’re OK. You’re not answering your phone. I’m sending a van to collect my gym stuff on Tuesday. I gave them my key in case you’re busy. Hope it’s not too upsetting for you, love Richard x
She’d known this was coming; the house had been on the market since soon after Rich left, his idea, wanting to help her ‘move on’ quickly, but nothing could have prepared her for the shock of it happening so suddenly.
The tingling cold started at her scalp and spread its strange grip down over her face and shoulders. Was she going to faint? She wasn’t holding her phone any longer but couldn’t say for sure where it was. Looking around, she tried to stay upright as she staggered out the water, the coral cutting into her feet with each unsteady step.
The drumming of her heartbeat in her ears and the awful spinning seemed suddenly to pause when she found herself faced with a pair of round, frightened eyes fixed upon her.
There on the shoreline stood a tiny calf, frozen to its spot, red in colour and as beautiful and doe-eyed as a cartoon animal. The calf shook its tagged ears but stood stock still.
Shaking her head to clear it, Beatrice focused on the pretty creature. ‘How on earth did you get down here?’
She scanned the hills above the But and Ben, spotting what looked like a feeding trough in the corner of a hoof-trodden meadow and no one around to help her fix this. How was she going to return this baby to its enclosure? She looked the calf over. Even if it was only small, it was still an actual real life cow, stocky and probably weighing as much as she did herself. Looking around for a stick she wondered if she could drive it back up onto the hill behind the cottages. How hard could it be?
Her eye settled upon a long stalk of sea kelp. ‘Ouch, ouch, Oww.’ The coral cut at her soles as she made her way towards it. Once it was in her hand, she pulled her shoes back onto her wet and aching feet and realised the kelp was floppy and probably not up to the job of steering the beast away from the dangerous water.
When would the tide come in? She had no idea, but judging from the pattern of seaweed on the highest reaches of the coral beach the water would come in right up to the rocks.
‘Can cows even swim?’ she asked the calf.
It blinked.
‘All right then. Come on.’ She motioned using her flopping kelp for the calf to turn back along the beach towards a path that seemed to lead up to the But and Ben. But the baby wouldn’t budge. So she tucked the kelp under her arm and clapped her hands, softly at first, and then, getting no reaction, more loudly.
‘Yah!’ she called, feeling every inch the cow wrangler, when suddenly the movement began. The baby startled and dashed past her in the direction Beatrice had clambered down the rocks.
‘No, no, wrong way, little one!’
Beatrice watched in horrified confusion as the calf bounded and slipped its way up through the rocks. What the hell was she supposed to do now? Call the RSPCA and report a rock-climbing cow? There was nothing for it but to follow the animal, all thoughts of Rich’s message, her lost phone, and of the teacher waiting for her in the cottage school forgotten.
That’s when she heard the great howling cry behind her, accompanied by snorting and the crunching clip-clop of kicked and scuffed coral and pebbles under hooves.
‘Oh, shit.’
A great horned bull was making its way towards her in pursuit of the calf, and following behind him, crossing the beach at an alarming pace, were at least twenty heifers of different sizes and colours and even more calves behind them, all heading directly for her.
‘A stampede! I’ve caused a bloody cattle stampede!’
The runaway calf that started this whole thing was nowhere to be seen, but only as she glanced around looking for it did she notice for the first time that between the boulders on the path that she herself had scrambled down moments ago there were hoof prints squashed into the mud and grass. The animals must pass this way often.
The bull keened a deep sound, calling the others on. Beatrice was trapped between the panicked herd, the rocks and the sea, and her heart was beginning to pound wildly.
Another ridiculous situation to get herself into. How did she do it?
The cows at the back of the group had split away and were trying to overtake the rest by splashing through the water to get to the front, cutting off Beatrice’s escape route into the deeper water. There was one thing for it: she’d have to climb and she knew she had only a fraction of a second to get onto the steep rocks and out of the way of the heavy bodies which were now bumping into one another, jostling and shoving as they funnelled through the narrow gap that the calf had gone through.
