Seaside Encounter
A story from Janus 26 by R.T. Mason. If you walked out past the holiday chalets you came to a stretch of beach where nobody much seemed to go although it was attractive enough, scrub land and the open sea with a narrow ribbon of beach between. That Thursday afternoon, with a hint of rain in the brisk offshore wind, there seemed to be no one there at all and she had walked for perhaps half a mile quite alone. And then she saw him, a lone figure standing gazing out to sea. Afterwards, looking back, it was tempting to think she sensed something about him, some special quality, even then. But she knew that really that was merely being fanciful. She had been there almost a week, the first half of a two-week holiday with her parents and though she would never have admitted it to them, she was a bit bored. Due, without doubt, primarily to the fact that Bob wasn’t there. Bob, her fiancé (or due to formally become so in a month’s time),
