Winter at Pretty Beach by Polly Babbington (inspirational books txt) 📕

by road it’s two minutes away and right next door. I’m always on the way to Newport or something so I’ve never stopped here.’

It’s one of the first places I came to down here actually before I’d even heard of Pretty Beach. We came down to have a look at the canal, you know, being into transport and all that.’

Sallie squeezed his hand; she knew that had brought back a memory of Tana. She could hear it in his voice.

‘You okay?’

‘Yep all good. Come on, we need to go through the High Street, over the old park with the bandstand, dip down the other side and then the canal runs all the way out through the town and out into the countryside - there are lots of pubs along the way. We’ll see how far we get along.’

Sallie put her arm through Ben’s, pulled her hat further down over her ears and they walked all the way down the tiny cobbled street in the middle of the town, lights criss-crossed over the top, bunting lined the shops and hanging baskets full of pansies hung from the coach lights lining the pavement.

They walked over the park, past the bandstand and made their way down a grassy incline and through the trees. All of a sudden there it was, the Pearl Beach Canal Ben had been telling her about that she’d never heard of before he’d casually mentioned it a few weeks earlier.

The whole scene in front of them was layered in a thin coating of pure white, the canopy of overhanging tree branches heavy with snow and the water in the canal a glinting icy grey-white.

Colourful red, black, yellow and bright green canal boats lining the side some with little gates to the front, contrasted with the white surroundings and tiny little billows of smoke curled their way up from chimneys through the frosty air.

A throng of walkers with dogs and prams strolled along the canal path, and over on the other side a pub with cosy lights on inside, outdoor heaters and tiny little curved windows tempted them to cross over the lock and settle down with a drink.

‘This is lovely, Ben,’ Sallie said, looking down at all the enchanting canal boats as they walked along the towpath.

‘It certainly is beautiful. I’ve always fancied myself a little canal boat - thought it would go well with the seaplanes but, well, I never really got around to it.’

‘Ha, my mind was just going there - how much use would you really get out of it though?’

‘I know, unless you live on it I guess you’d just use it every now and then - which was as far as I got thinking about it... and then Tana got ill, etcetera and then here I am all these years later with you.’

Sallie squeezed his arm as they walked along commenting on all the beautiful boats, their different paintings and signage, and all the weird and wonderful names displayed proudly on the sides.

They passed an old pub right on the towpath and peeked in the window to a roaring fire with a couple of dogs asleep in front of it, the smell of roast pork in the air and window boxes laden with ivy trailing all the way down to the path.

Continuing along the towpath, the boats tied to the side started to tail off and they scraped off a thin layer of snow on a bench on the side, put the picnic rug down on top of the seat, sat down and poured the piping hot milky chocolate into the little flask cups and broke off bits of gingerbread as they sat people watching families out for a Sunday stroll.

A family with a toddler in a cute pink bobble hat and heavily pregnant mum stopped to stroke a dog who was sitting on the deck of one of the boats looking around at the passers-by. Sallie observed the picture-perfect family scene in front of them and sighed thinking about how she’d been convinced she was pregnant when they’d stood on the top of the hill outside the little church in Pretty Beach and how a few months later that little dream had come to an abrupt end.

As she sat there on the bench sipping the sweet hot chocolate her mind wandered. Sallie had never thought she would even entertain the idea of having a baby again. She’d kept all those feelings nicely locked up in a little box marked with ‘don’t even think about it’, and left it with her two failed marriages. But since she’d been around Nina and Tillie and since meeting Ben she’d realised that she could perhaps open up her heart again, and had begun to envisage herself with a baby.

She wanted her and Ben to be parents, and thought about how wonderful it would be to be a happy little family unit more and more. She always tried to stop the thoughts in their tracks, not wanting to be too invested in it because she was scared to let herself go, petrified to think about it too much in case it never happened.

As she sat there looking at the family scene playing out in front of them she felt a wave of disappointment wash over her admitting to herself how her not falling pregnant would be so hard for her to accept now that she’d found Ben.

Ben put his hand on her leg and gave it a pat.

‘It’ll happen, beautiful, just you wait and see.’

Chapter 11

Nina tucked Tillie into her pram suit, wrapped her up snuggly into the carrier, then popped on her sunglasses, put her hat on and headed off down to the beach for a walk. Tillie needed to get her dose of fresh air and Nina needed to clear her head. She checked that she had her puffer in the pocket of her coat - the doctor had said that the cold air could possibly make it worse. She hadn’t felt anything so far