Everyone else I knew considered living in Halford a privilege and on some level, I understood that. It wasn’t the people, nor the pretentiousness, nor the amenities that I despised; it was simply the outdoors. For most of my teenage years I was happy to join my friends when congregating on the beach or at the pier was a necessity, but always managed to weasel my way out of anything that resembled a physical activity. Every summer I moaned of having a cold when cliff jumping was suggested, or of some fabled delicate skin disease when they went swimming. Such lies became slightly more difficult under Connie’s constant attention, however, and as such, I found myself unable to escape the first dive and swim of the year.

Everyone else was already at the diving boards but the gulls lining the cliff path provided Connie and I with an obstacle that left us delayed by nearly twenty minutes. It was no day for the sea in my humble opinion—late March, overcast and breezy. We weren’t the only ones out that afternoon. The only time the cliff walks were ever really empty was at night or if a red weather warning was declared, and even then there were stubborn dog walkers or belligerent hikers who assumed they knew better than those who watched the weather for a living. Sometimes on those days Connie and I would stand on her balcony overlooking the coast and watch the waves, several feet high, untamed and feral, as they smashed against the craggy rocks along the shore. There was something oddly comforting in staring down at the sea in a tempest from her room, tethering between safety and danger. It made my heart accelerate to stand there and feel the rain on my skin, listening to the wind howl and the sea roar. It reminded me of our mortality, and yet to stand there in the turbulence was almost an act of defiance against nature itself. We dared the earth to throw what it could at us but we were safe, on her balcony. We stood in the rain and laughed, giddy with a taste of whatever adrenaline it was that overcame storm chasers, before retreating a simple step back inside.

Of course, watching seagulls get tossed around in the sky so carelessly didn’t do anything to subdue my giddiness either.

I wouldn’t go out walking on a day like that, reckless as we might have thought ourselves to be. The cliff was jagged and along the edges the ground was often loose and unstable. Down below there were few spots where the rocks peeking out of the water weren’t sharp and tall, and the town council had marked those places where it was safe to go cliff diving out with sign-posts and warnings. My friends might have been daft but they weren’t completely stupid and so they stuck to jumping from the diving boards only, knowing that attempting anything else would be fatal. That afternoon they were the only ones around who had decided to swim, busy as the cliff walk might have been.