The Heat of Time by Louise

I wake late and briefly run my hands through my matted hair, rubbing the night from my eyes. Light streams through the billowing curtains, so I screw up my face and turn over. The clock hands stand to attention: it’s already half past twelve. I ignore them and fall back asleep. When I stir again, I quickly pull on yesterday’s crumpled clothes, and douse my wrists in heavy perfume. Shadows are beginning to form in the tangled garden below; the sun is well past its height. I’ve already spent most of this day recovering from the last. Stray sand tips onto the floor as I absently transfer ice lolly wrappers and a collection of sticky coins from my pockets onto the faded window sill. The sound of my sandals on the wooden stairs, and the rattle of my keys in the door break the stagnant silence of the empty house, but only when I reach the street outside does life really present itself.
Cries of distant seagulls pierce the thinning blue sky, which stretches like a vast, shady lid over the town. A few cars drift by, spilling quiet music onto the pavements through their gaping windows. Dust collects between my exposed toes. It gathers under my grubby coral fingernails too when I bend down to adjust my sandals and conceal the stripy suntan. Even under this retreating sun, sweat is moistening my back, so I pause in a dark newsagent’s and enjoy the cold, dank air for a moment. I buy another grimy broadsheet. Rowdy headlines vie for attention on the front page, exclaiming yesterday’s dramatic events – already obsolete after another whole day has passed in the real world. Back outside, remnants of melted tarmac glisten in the middle of the road.
We agreed to meet in the market street, but they catch up with me crossing Church Square. A comfortable silence drifts among us: nothing has changed since yesterday; the routine is as ever. Nothing to do and nowhere to go, as long as we are trapped in this summery paradise. The cloying smell of sun cream pervades the group; the only lasting reminder of the rules and rigidity of childhood, and of now long-absent parents. Our shadows on the pavement gradually lengthen into spindly giants as the sun dips. The cooling evening air stirs us into action.
Our quiet unity becomes a hindrance when we enter the cold, bright aisles of the tiny supermarket on the corner opposite the building society. A muffled titter breaks out when a display of Weetabix is knocked over. Thighs are bruised by the rogue corners of a rattling wire shopping basket filled with our picnic. We finish and make a break for the beach: out of the whistling automatic doors, down a dusty side street, through a dustbin alley overcome with swathes of golden laburnum, past the picture-perfect 18th green, over the Swilcan Bridge, and finally out, onto the blank dunes.
An itchy tartan rug emerges and is spread out underfoot, already covered in sand, and suspiciously damp after last night’s marine exploits. My companions are bathed in orange light, from both the setting sun, and the fluorescent street lamps which prematurely light the road parallel with the sands. Night has been falling sooner and sooner since the very first evening we had spent sea-side, the difference unnoticeable day to day, but considerable in its entirety. Our group has not changed at all with this progression. We collapse, relieved, onto the woolly carpet, for the hundredth time. The gentle roar of the surf accompanies our idle chatter. Smoke from the fire one of us has lit stings my eyes.
The moon is up now and the waves sparkle with reflections of the marble sky. Feet bare, we run to across the cool sand and into the water. The girls squeal in mock displeasure, but the water is fresh and inviting after today’s dry, oppressive heat. Broken shells and shingle on the sea bed mimic the scattered stars in the velvety grey sky above. We abandon our dune and swim in the inky water, our pale bodies splashing ineffectually against the tide. The water is cooler than it had been on our first night here, but no one mentions it: to put this decline into words makes it even more inevitable. None of us yet feel able to recognise the closing of our summer: the truth that soon our days will be filled with a far less welcome routine; that eventually reality will be able to reassert itself.
When we cross the beach once more, it is deserted. Even the cries of the seagulls have ceased until dawn. Sand sticks to my legs as I try in vain to dry myself with a T-shirt: despite our cursing this discomfort, no one ever remembers a towel. We walk back up through the town. The bars are quietening. I’ve stayed out too late, again. We say a brief goodbye, and I walk home alone, stepping tentatively in my still-bare feet. The end of the summer preys on my mind as I approach Sandy Hill Road, but I push it from my thoughts for at least one more day in the sun.