“…thirteen, fourteen…”
Two single dog walkers crossed right in front of Alex and Rose as they sat. The dogs sniffed food in the air but were kept on leads, so they couldn’t investigate further. Alex loved dogs, but from a standing position. Being eye to eye with one didn’t much take her fancy. She looked past the dog walkers to see if there were any more beach occupants behind them. Satisfied that there were none, she moved her gaze to the right and started counting again.
“…fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty…”
She spotted a family of six out of the corner of her eye, moving onto the beach almost directly behind them. Two of the family were really young and walked on the sand like it was their first time, slowly investigating the feel of it between their toes before gaining in confidence and starting to run, tripping up every ten strides or so before dusting down and starting the process again. Tentative steps – walk – run – fall – dust off – repeat. Alex was transfixed for a few moments before remembering her task in hand.
“…twenty-one, twenty-two…”
There were two teenage boys stood close together with their heads raised toward the sky. Alex hadn’t made herself any time for boys as anything other than friends in her life. She didn’t understand their obsessions and hadn’t made any effort to understand them either. She was happy with the friends she had in her life, almost exclusively female, and felt a bond with them that didn’t need the addition of a boyfriend. These two were looking up at the drone that one of them was operating. They were stood so close together that she couldn’t work out if it was the one closest to her or the one the other side of him. They wore different colour clothing, so she was sure there were two, but without the marks of colour she could have easily mistaken the shape to her far right as one human being.
“…twenty-three, twenty-four.”
Alex reached as far right as she could see. There were two more hazy silhouettes at the other end of the beach, and these were the last of the people she counted. As she compared this number with the undoubted multiple that they would encounter on a sunny beach in a tourist resort on the island of Majorca, Alex heard a thud. The next thing, she screamed like she had never screamed before. The thuds kept on coming. Alex thought there were scores of them. Later she would be told that there were eight sounds – seven short thuds and her one continuous scream. Every part of that morning on the beach would stay with her for the rest of her life. The sounds would come back in her dreams that night.
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