Sea Side

What happened that evening? It was a sea of faces, an ocean of voices. I didn't drink much, a few glasses of wine, and I circled around, but never far from Lucy. She talked to Didier for a long time. I saw a couple of shrugs, and after a while his frown deepened, and then he just laughed and appeared to want to end the conversation.

Eventually she found her way back to me.

"Well?"
"What a slippery character."
"How?"
"I started off by saying that we'd been to see St Guthlac Sur Mer. Blank look. A if he'd never heard of the place. I told him where it was. I said about the land reclamation..."
"And."
"And then I got more crap about working holidays and not being able to relax. Which we've heard before. And I explained that I was the kind of tourist who liked to learn about the area I was visiting, not just sit on the beach. Although, would you like to go to the beach tomorrow afternoon? After stopping off for a quick visit to the church again?"
"Sure, we'll make a day of it. Let's go to Super U, too, because I'm the kind of tourist likes to look at the different varieties of crisps you can get."
"All right then, we'll do that."

She suddenly grabbed me and pulled me close to her in an affectionate hug.

"It's so lovely to be around you again," she said.
"Ditto. So?"

"So then I eventually managed to squeeze out of him that when he was in the seminary there had been an old priest who..." She tailed off, obviously struck by something.
"What?"
"Flashback."
"What?"
"My granddad Jack. Not really my granddad but my great granddad. He died when I was about 9 or 10. We used to visit him. Which was in Lincolnshire, on the coast. I just remembered it, I'd forgotten."
"So what about it?"
"I'm not sure. Anyway, there was this old priest who believed some strange things. The whole thing blew up because they wanted to install some electric lights in the church, and he threw a wobbler about them not being able to dig anywhere on or near the church."
"So what was the outcome?"
"He claims he doesn't know. But I'd like to take one more look at the tombs, to see if I can decipher anything."
"What are you looking for exactly?"
"I'm just thinking there might be some connection, this is going to sound crazy, but my granddad Jack's village, half of it had disappeared off the edge of a cliff. I'm wondering if there's some connection between something like that and something somebody believes is buried under the church in St Guthlac Sur Mer."