“Beautiful,” he says, looking at me through the image on his phone. “The light, I mean.”
I stare ahead toward the sun, the sky starting to turn pink as Ash moves around snapping me continuously, not really stopping to check what he’s doing. Quantity over quality. Still, he’s the only photographer I’ve got. “I kind of want wistful and arty. Like I didn’t know anyone was photographing me.”
He laughs and then bites his lip. “Sorry,” he says, not looking very sorry. “Maybe stand up, then. Battered cod and a plastic bottle of water doesn’t look wistful and arty.”
Just then, a seagull dive-bombs me, its foot scratching right across my head before it steals in for a chip. I clutch the greasy paper to my chest, trying to hide it from the little bastard. But then he turns in the air and comes back for me, long, spindly yellow feet first.
“Oh my God, I’m being fucking attacked!” I scream, standing up clutching the food tighter to me and shaking my head furiously. The commotion and excitement seem to attract more of them, and suddenly I am overcome with gusts of wind and feathers.
“It’s a massacre!” I scream again, losing all sense of my surroundings. “It’sThe Birds! I’m inThe Birds!”
“Drop the food!” shouts Ash, but I can’t focus, as the squawking sends my heart racing and I blindly run down the pier, gut first into a rubbish bin, winding myself. Then I feel another bastard zoom past me and I drop half the chips over the pier and hobble off as fast as I can, like a drunk burglar, stopping to look back only when I am safely under the awning of an ice cream stand.
“Cone or cup?” I hear behind me as I gasp and pant for breath, my hands trembling.
I look back down the pier to see Ash now jogging after me withmy handbag, stopping momentarily to double over and laugh. “I’m sorry,” he says as he arrives, handing me my bag, “that was just far too funny for words. The screaming—I couldn’t tell if it was you or the birds.”
I give him my best death stare.
“You’re okay, right?” he says. “You’re not hurt, Mara?”
“No,” I say, ignoring the very real bruising of my ego.
“Cone or cup?” says the ice cream seller again behind me. I turn around and glare at him and his stupid candy-striped hat.
“I don’t want ice cream,” I snap.
“Then step aside,” he says, nodding toward a gang of five-year-olds thundering toward us with much the same single-minded fervor as the seagulls. I feel like I might be having a panic attack.
Ash pulls me away from the stand. I feel the strength of his hand on my elbow as he squeezes me and then rubs my upper arm like I’m a child.
“Mara, that was so funny. Come on, you’ve got to find that funny. You’re covered in bird shit, by the way.”
I can’t bear to touch my hair, so I fold my arms and shrug his hand away.
“Youwerelike that lady fromThe Birds,” he says.
“That lady was terrorized. Hitchcock actually terrorized her for that film.”
His face turns serious as he pulls me in for a side-on squash. It’s almost a hug and it’s comforting. “Are you okay?”
“I’m humiliated,” I say.
“They’re just seagulls,” he says.
“Horrible squawking beasts. Worse than cows.”
“What’s wrong with cows?”
“They stare,” I reply.
“They stare,” he says, nodding, trying desperately not to laugh now. “Come on, you’re safe. They only wanted the chips.”
I smile a little and shake my head at him. I look down at the smear of bird poo on Jackie’s trench coat and tuck my bag under my arm in an attempt at dignity; then I look for a rubbish bin to toss what’s left of dinner.
“This didn’t go as planned, and now my hair is ruined.”
“I got some good shots before the, erm, attack,” he says, fishing for his phone in his pocket.
