Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
MAISIE
The breeze coming off the bay bit at Maisie’s cheeks as she stepped down from the bus behind Iain. They’d pulled into a small car park at the south end of Borth’s beach, the only car park on the seafront by the look of things.
The town was only a few kilometres up the coast from Aberystwyth and yet it couldn’t be any more different. Instead of four-story Victorian hotels on the seafront, quaint houses were set twenty yards back from the pebbled beach, if that.
Flag posts lining the car park buffeted as the group gathered on the empty tarmac, rearranging hats and coats and extending walking sticks. The gift shop on the other side of the street rather optimistically displayed colourful mini shovels and windbreakers, the narrow beach as quiet as to be expected for nine o’clock on a January morning.
Iain – who looked like he’d been adopted by this gaggle of elders – kept Ted on a rope lead for now. Maisie sidled up to catch the corner of his sight and vaguely pointed over in the direction of safety posters on the lifeguard station written in both English and Welsh.
“Do you understand Welsh?” she asked. Given the thickness of his accent, he’d definitely been raised here.
Iain adjusted the grey, tubular snood around his throat. “ Ydw ? * . Why do you ask?”
“Just curiosity. I noticed when I used to come here when I was young that so much is written out twice.” On signposts, shop fronts – even the painted markers on the roads.
“Pick any other country in Europe and things will be written twice there, too.”
Well that just made her sound naive.
“I know.” Maisie backtracked, digging her hands into the pockets of her waterproof coat. “Sorry, I just wondered if you could speak it, that’s all. A few of my friends are bilingual and sometimes I just wish that I was a part of that club.”
The slight edge to Iain’s focus softened. “It’s never too late to learn.”
“True. But it’s not quite the same as growing up that way.”
“So you didn’t grow up here?” The tiniest hint of goading wormed into Iain’s voice.
“Was it my accent that gave it away?” He was saved from having to answer that by Vera who called the group together.
Half listening to a rundown of how long the trail was (she heard ‘eight kilometres’ and the words ‘be very careful’ uttered at least twice), Maisie dug out the fleece that she’d bundled into her backpack and took a minute of shedding and replacing her coat to put it on underneath.
She knew that coming to Wales would involve rain, so she’d purposefully bought a deep-berry coloured pair of outdoor trousers before she’d left London – which had been an absolute nightmare to find. Firstly, finding a pair in her size, and secondly, a comfortable high-waisted pair that didn’t cut off her circulation midway up her belly. She’d spent an arm and a leg, but given that the trousers were necessary, Maisie put up with it. Now that she was stuck going on her first ever hike, she was glad to have them. The inner fleece was so warm despite the wind flapping at the fabric around her calves.
When Maisie lifted her backpack from the ground and her eyes from her feet, the group had already begun to move off. But Iain watched her, waiting. He’d stayed where he was whilst the others were already out of the car park and walking along the roadside path.
“Are you ready to go?”
“ Oh, you—” Her voice came out pitchy and Maisie cleared her throat. “You don’t have to walk with me.” With those legs, she’d have thought Iain would be halfway home by now. He didn’t say anything but tilted his head warmed by a grey beanie. “I’m not going to be very fast,” she added as seagulls went keow over the shifting tide.
“It’s not a race.”
Maisie wrapped her fingers around the straps of her backpack. “I’ll slow you down.”
“If I wanted to go for a quicker walk,” Iain said in his slightly bored tone, “I would’ve joined a marching band.”
She chuffed. “Okay then. But when we fall behind you can’t say that I didn’t warn you.”
Iain appraised her outfit in another slow sweep that made Maisie acutely aware of herself, his gaze snagging on her feet. “Are those boots new?”
“Yeah. They look good, right?” She didn’t think he was interested in her fashion choice for aesthetics, which made her ask, “Why?”
Another rumble came from his throat.
What was that sound for? She’d bought the navy and pink boots from a reputable shop for people who did this sort of thing more often than her. Iain would’ve blended in seamlessly with the railings of earth-toned fabrics and murals of mountains and rivers on the walls.
“Come on you two!” Ronnie called out.
The group had gained a decent distance ahead, along a narrow road that followed the coastline above the beach.
Iain gave a gentle tug on Ted’s lead, disturbing his sniff of a fence post separating the car park from the sand, then cocked his head for Maisie to walk with them. Still confused by the furrowed brow he’d directed at her boots, she stepped beside him while Ted bulldozed his way forwards, nose to the pavement.
After merely a few paces, it was nearly impossible to ignore the elders’ furtive glances, noses peeking over their shoulders to look back at them lagging behind.
Maisie lacked the faculty of filtering her brain before she asked, “What’s the chance that they’re going to gossip about you catching me?” Hastily, she added, “Thank you, again, for that.”
“You’re welcome.” Iain may be a little grouchy but at least he was polite about it. “And chances are likely.”
“I’m starting to think Nain made me join the group just to embarrass me.” With a roll of her eyes, Maisie hitched her backpack with a bounce in her step. “She thinks I need to make friends. Not that—I have friends. They’re just not here, obviously …”
Iain didn’t say anything, thankfully.
Moving on from her blabbering, they strolled past a block of public toilets, opening up Maisie’s view to the boat park and the ocean and?—
“Oh no— no. Please tell me that’s not where we’re going.” She whipped a pointed finger at the grassy cliff jutting out from behind the farthest edge of town. She didn’t know Iain, but she wasn’t short of begging him for a different route.
He looked at her oddly, his stern brows drawn together tight. “Can’t do the Ceredigion Coastal Path without following the coast.”
As if the clouded grey sky didn’t put a downer on Maisie’s morning, this was worse. Cold wind caught in her ears, and she tugged down the fuzzy headband she had to make do with since no beanie could ever contain her mane of curls. She hadn’t had time to prepare them today, other than slinging them in a ponytail.
She didn’t want to sound miserable, but she didn’t even want to be hiking. Maybe she could turn around and ask the balding man who’d driven the van to take her back to Aberystwyth with him but— yep , okay, he’d already gone. The back of his white minibus sped away in the opposite direction down the high street.
“It’s not that bad.” Iain must have read the desperation in her eyes when she stared at the cliff, not short of whining sounds she was entirely too adult to make.
“Look at me,” Maisie demanded before she could think better of it. When had they stopped walking?
“I am.” He was.
She wafted her hands in a wild gesture at her body. “Do you not see this?”
Normally, Maisie didn’t let her size put her off from doing anything. Wearing big, bold colours every day? Done. A two piece at a pool in the south of France? Completed . She liked walking in a totally normal, sane, respectable amount. What she didn’t like were hills or cliffs or the chance that she could slip down one to her death. A drop of tea had already almost felled her today.
Iain barely passed her a more thorough glance. “Is there some medical reason why you can’t walk for a couple of hours?”
Well, not today. Today was a ‘good’ day. “No. But the hills ?—”
“Then we’ll take it slow. The inclines are only every now and then. You can do it.”
Maisie let out a strangled groan. The last thing she expected to come from a man who looked permanently pissed off with the world was reassurances. But Iain –in all his six-foot-something, built-like-he’d-grown-up-in-the-wild musculature – overestimated the ability of her knees to combat a cliff.
Her nose scrunched prissily for a split second before she wiped the expression from her features. Iain didn’t need to deal with childish reluctance any more than she wanted to end the day with aching knees.
“Look, Ted is excited to walk,” he said, switching tactics in a way Maisie didn’t miss the blaring obviousness of as his wiry dog glared at her to move along. “This is his first hike of the year, would you want to disappoint him?”
“That’s not fair.” She dug her nails into the straps on either side of her breasts like it was the parachute pack she’d definitely need after one gust of wind on that cliff. “You can’t use your dog to manipulate me, especially since he stole my breakfast.”
As if Ted knew exactly what his owner tried to do, he sat himself down at her feet and cocked his head. Maisie wasn’t entirely sure that he hadn’t just heard the word ‘breakfast’ and assumed she was going to give him seconds.
The elders had stopped up ahead, apparently noticing the absence of two of their members. They watched this interaction from afar with glinting, curious eyes.
Knowing she wasn’t going to win this fight, especially since she had no way home except to walk, Maisie breathed out one word. “Okay.”
“Brilliant.” Iain’s accent rolled through all of the syllables as he set off again along the pavement.
Eventually, they caught up to the group. It took five minutes of walking the steady incline to reach where an earthen footpath began up the cliffside, peeling off the road. Taking a second to breathe, Maisie stopped and looked back at the bay, at the low, white, foamy waves being blown against the rocks.
“Maisie?” A lone voice called her. It was the first time Iain had said her name, and she unfortunately loved the sound of it from his lips.
“Coming.”
She caught up, which she feared would evolve into the theme of the morning, and followed Iain where the trail narrowed between hedgerows on either side of a wooden gate. A small blue and yellow marker signposted the Welsh Coast Path. Maisie didn’t completely see the purpose for the gate, given that there was a section next to it which had no barrier at all.
Iain slipped through and let Ted off his lead as soon as they were on the other side, looping the orange rope around a strap of his backpack. Now, Maisie wasn’t an expert at this, but by the look of the sheer drop only a few paces to her right to a rock-solid landing below, she wouldn’t personally have let Ted go free.
“Won’t this trail get a bit close to the edge?” she asked Iain as she wiggled around the gate.
“Huh?”
She opened her mouth to reiterate when Iain said, “Not just yet. Ted knows to stay on the trail. He doesn’t ever run off.”
Maisie started to get the feeling that his mind processed her questions on a slight delay.
“But what about the wind?” she asked next, following the trail up the incline that decided to sharpen. Only a few steps, and Maisie already regretted her choices since last night, particularly the one where she agreed to this.
Iain shrugged his broad shoulders, hands casually slung in his pockets which – she couldn’t rightly be blamed for noticing – strained the olive-coloured fabric over his well sculpted arse.
“What about the wind?” he rebuffed. “This is mild. It’ll die down.”
Unfortunately, Maisie didn’t know Iain well enough to trust much of what he said as she lagged behind. “But doesn’t the trail get close to the edge? What if one of us?—”
“There’s fencing in places, and we wouldn’t walk if we didn’t know we were safe.” Iain’s general bluntness inched more towards being irritated with her cautiousness.
It’s January, Maisie wanted to hiss. On the edge of a cliff.
“What if it rains?”
“You realise you’re in Wales?”
“Wait—this isn’t Saint Tropez?” Maisie faked a gasp. “But I brought my bikini.”
Satisfaction swam through her veins when Iain looked back over his shoulder at her with an expression drier than sand, though there was definitely a trace of a smile on his lips. Surprisingly good lips for a man. Maisie snapped her gaze away from being locked on them.
“I’m making the decision to trust your judgement,” she said and hoped that she wouldn’t regret it later.
Another unintelligible grunt, of course, was Iain’s response.
As they ploughed on uphill, he explained that the trail should be ‘fine’. It rained a couple of days ago but the earth should have mostly dried out by now, meaning the chance of slipping was only high if you were clumsy – he said that part with a not-so-indiscreet glance her way.
The trail wasn’t rain-quenched for the most part up to the crest of the first cliff. Iain’s well-worn boots barely made a sound in the compacted, damp earth – unlike hers. Maisie’s expensive sports bra put in overtime with the uphill trek. It strapped her breasts down enough for them to not jump up to her chin with every step she pushed on upwards. Iain slowed midway when he didn’t have to – she would happily continue walking to her out-of-breath demise from exhaustion by herself.
The cliff came to a peak before she realised it, though. The others had stopped at the top and hovered around a lookout periscope pointed out to sea, exchanging turns.
They’d barely walked for twenty minutes, but still Maisie took a welcomed seat on a step of what she gathered was an old war memorial, if the inscribed stone at the foot of the monument gave anything away. She took the water bottle from the side pocket of her backpack and chugged some of it down, watching Ted wander to the wired fencing behind her and stare at the sheep on the opposite side. Iain’s eyes landed on the metal she raised to her lips and then snapped away, his body shifting at various points like he relived the impact of it to his crotch. Maisie wouldn’t be surprised if he grimaced as he walked to join the pensioners.
She thought that she should apologise for that moment on the bus, since her first attempt had been thwarted, but maybe saying nothing at all about how she’d potentially put a man she’d only met an hour ago out of action for a couple of days was best. His poor partner probably wouldn’t thank her for any injury, yet if he had someone in his life, he probably wouldn’t be hiking with a bunch of retirees (and her) on a Saturday morning, either.
Up here, the wind was even more fierce, and Maisie adjusted her headband to cover her ears better. She couldn’t make out much of the conversations happening in front of her, only that thirteen pairs of eyes flicked her way one by one when, two minutes later, Iain offered her his gloved hand and helped her back to her feet.
For all the decline down the other side of the cliff, which was a lot easier than coming upwards, he didn’t say much at all. Not until, when reinforced steps appeared like they’d been dug out of the ground, the earth suddenly felt like it might slide out from beneath her.
“Shit, this is slippery today,” Iain said to himself, but Maisie heard it.
She didn’t like that spike of something other than passiveness in his voice. Her gaze shot beyond him to find Vera – who still had a broken wrist and really shouldn’t be doing any of this at all – but Ronnie had a firm grip on her as she descended, and she used her hiking stick in a way that said she knew what she was doing to not let herself fall.
Rather un-optimistically, Maisie looked down at her own feet. Iain had already moved down a few steps curving with the shape of the cliff. She watched him, where he planted his feet, and tried to follow.
He noticed her hesitant movements. “Take your time.”
“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that,” Maisie answered under her breath.
Yesterday, she’d been at her computer, in the warmth with a cup of tea, organising pages of a veterinary website with pictures of cute kittens and bunnies, and now she couldn’t feel her nose from how chilly it was.
When she made it to the little wooden bridge at the bottom of the steps without incident, both Iain and Ted waited for her. She’d noticed there was an aloofness to their relationship that was oddly filled with affection. It was in how Ted looked back from a distance to check where Iain was, and how he didn’t wander too far without him.
The next section of cliff was as steep as the first, for now, with a narrower trail surrounded by mounds of grass that forced her to walk in front of Iain when he gestured for her to go first.
If he was going to keep on doing this – waiting – then they might as well have an actual conversation.
“I haven’t asked you what you do,” she said, the ocean foaming where it hit the rocks below them.
“Nothing special. I work in a showroom selling kitchens and bathrooms.”
“Why is that not special?”
“It’s tedious,” he said, and Maisie had to strain her ears against the wind to hear him answer. “Nothing ever really changes.”
Maisie knew that feeling. She’d worked a bunch of jobs through university and straight afterward before she’d landed at her current company. Things that were okay at the time and paid her bills but didn’t stir her imagination in any way at all. From what she’d seen so far, she couldn’t even hazard a guess at what might get Iain’s juices flowing like designing did to hers.
“You’re bored with it,” she noted, glaring at a lump of embedded stone in the ground that she stepped over.
“An understatement.” Iain’s unimpressed tone really meant it. “These walks are the highlight of my week.”
Okay, that really gave Maisie more insight into him than maybe he wanted to reveal. Perhaps he did simply enjoy being outside with spray from the ocean hitting him and his dog and a bunch of OAPs, or maybe he was more like her than anyone looking at them might think. Simply seeking colour and vibrancy in their lives. However, her blue and pink boots, berry trousers, red waterproof coat, and green headband next to his dark, earthy tones said that they were two peas from vastly different pods.
“So you don’t do anything else to relax?” Maisie managed to look over her shoulder when Iain was quiet, in case he hadn’t heard her.
He looked guilty for a second. “I play for Aber’s rugby team.”
“That doesn’t sound relaxing at all.” She would’ve laughed if she weren’t so close to being short of breath. Her knees really weren’t prepared for this kind of climb.
Iain stared at her through his dark lashes and Maisie wished that – for the sake of her already quivering thighs – he wouldn’t. “Well we’re not professionals,” he said, “and most of us don’t enjoy getting injured, so we don’t do contact quite as hard.”
“Sounds like you all just enjoy one big group hug.”
A twitch of a smile touched Iain’s lips.
Triumphant, Maisie was sure she could get an actual laugh out of him. “Hey, there’s no shame in a group of guys gently having contact with each other.”
His tongue poked inside his stubbled cheek where the beard tapered out, and Maisie took that as a win.
Even with her being a step ahead, he looked down at her, brows askew, likely wondering what had happened to the bumbling, shy woman he’d saved from falling out of a minibus earlier. This is what happened once she was marginally comfortable with someone – or she could blame it on the fresh, salty sea air. So the only way was up now.
Literally .
The hike continued like that for another hour; up and down, up and down. The incline decided to kick into the next gear and really kick Maisie’s butt. She nearly slipped on a section that was purely rock right when she’d thought the land might be kind to her, and ever since she almost fell on her arse, which wouldn’t have been enough in its generous size to break a fall, Iain led their pairing.
Right at the steepest points was where the trail seemed to veer closest to the very high edge of the cliffside. Maisie didn’t dare lean and attempt to watch the greyish ocean foaming over the rocks, instead keeping her eyes on the trail and Vera with her purple cast up ahead.
They met another gate on a decline, and a yellow sign boldly read ‘Cliffs Kill ’ in two languages, just in case the message wasn’t clear, which didn’t exactly fill Maisie with hope.
“I’ve walked this before,” Iain said when he saw her looking at it. “You’ll be fine. Just stay close to the land instead of the drop-off.”
Maisie tugged the zip of her coat to her chin. “You say that as if it isn’t really, really windy right now.”
“You can hold onto me if you need to.”
As much as she would like that, she stammered through saying, “Oh, I’ll be fine,” because the thought of Iain touching her in any way again caused some sort of tiny reaction in her. More than that, the offer actually sounded genuine.
Her gaze wandered to where there now lacked a mound of grass between the trail’s edge and the cliffside. If she slipped sideways, it’d be her final bow. But as soon as she was through the gate, her attention was swept up by a single white house sitting at the base of the decline, above a tiny little pebble beach.
“Welcome to Wallog,” Iain said from beside her.
Maisie wouldn’t even try and replicate the throaty sound of the double Ls. She’d only butcher the language that Iain sounded so protective of.
“Someone lives here?” They must do, because lights glowed behind the windows and a car sat outside of the house. But there was nothing else around. The white house, across a bridge where water fed out in a rapid stream to the sea, was completely alone.
“I suppose.” Iain watched where Ted pawed at a patch of tufted grass, his little boots doing good work at stopping dirt from getting under his claws.
The vantage point exposed some kind of brick building tucked away on a patch of grassland in the middle of the secluded beach and a narrow streak of land stretching out to sea, like a finger of pebbles and shingle pointing out towards something that was no longer there. Maisie hadn’t studied geography in years, but she was sure that in technical terms it’d be called a spit.
She halted on the hill. “Do you know what that is?”
“ Sarn Gynfelyn,” Iain answered her, slowing his own step as he explained. “Old legend says it was once a sea wall of a lost mythical kingdom. It was swallowed by the sea when the kingdom’s guardian, Seithennin, got drunk, presumably, and failed to close the gates, meaning the land was drowned by the ocean. Now the remaining spit reaches something like fourteen kilometres out underwater.”
Maisie watched the movement of his lips and the twitch of his chill-touched nose as he gave another unusually long chunk of words to their conversation, his skin above his beard a little uneven in its texture. The extent of the story he’d given in his answer was impressive, and it definitely showed on her face.
Iain caught her look and shrugged. “I did some research after the first time I saw it.”
“That sounds like a fantasy book waiting to be written. I love stories like this. We don’t get many old myths and legends in London.”
“You’re telling me that there’s no stories of monsters swimming up the Thames?”
“Not one that I believe in.”
“Moo Moo!” Vera’s nickname for her carried up the cliff on the wind. “Are you coming down?”
In their break to talk about myths and the lone white house on the beach, the pensioners had made it halfway to the bridge crossing the river at the base.
Maisie looked at Iain squarely. “We’d better go.”
He pursed his lips in agreement. “After you, Moo Moo.”
God, he was never going to live that down. “ Please forget that you know about that?”
“It’ll be hard.”
“I can pay you in one croissant . ”
Iain hummed. “I might need some more convincing.”
She groaned.
They caught up to the others waiting in front of where the bridge crossed the water just outside of the house.
“Oh no,” Malc – at least that’s what Maisie thought his name was – said as he patted down his coat pockets. “I think I dropped my bus pass. I had it just up there.”
Up there … as in the peak of the cliff they’d just spent half an hour descending?
“I can go back,” Iain offered, and Maisie was shocked he didn’t sound more irritated. What were the chances of finding a tiny piece of card within a few kilometres of bracken and grass in blustery weather?
“No. No. We always hike in pairs,” Vera argued which received hums of agreement. She swivelled. “Maisie, you can go too.”
I can— “What?” Maisie’s eyes widened.
Ronnie tried to help. “Perhaps I should?—”
Vera not-so-subtly swatted his arm. “The young legs won’t mind, will they?”
Maisie forced a smile. It didn’t exactly seem fair to make anyone who was at least twice her age go back up the cliff to search for something that could probably be reissued with a simple phone call anyway. It’d be completely selfish of her.
Her people pleasing tendencies were why she grinned, bared it, and said, “I’ll go.” If this ‘hiking in pairs’ rule was real, then she felt safe enough that Iain wasn’t secretly a psychopath who would push her off the cliff with no one around to witness it.
“We’ll meet you at the supermarket in Clarach,” he told the others. Malc patted his shoulder in thanks and joined the rest of them in crossing the footbridge.
Maisie and Iain did a one-eighty, and even Ted didn’t seem impressed to be heading back up the route they’d already taken down.
“This isn’t how I imagined my first hike would go.” Maisie exhaled heavily, preparing herself mentally for walking back up the bloody hill.
“Which part?” Iain said hoarsely as the wind took a turn to hit their faces.
“Well, being abandoned, for one.”
“What am I then?”
She glanced at his perfectly handsome face. “Unfortunate.”
Iain shook his head and hitched his backpack. “Let’s go before this thing blows away and gets lost forever.”
* ? Yes, I do