The sight of her own shins surprised her. Pearlescent almost in their whiteness, goosebumping in the biting air with the rest of her, they looked vulnerable, like pale grubs dug up from the earth. She wondered when she had last truly noticed her legs, really studied them. In her forties, perhaps, when she had met the love of her life and felt reborn; or, no, it must have been 23 years later when grief, for a spell, had rendered her a stranger in her own body.
She deposited clothes and bag in the plastic bin that the girl, who was wrapped head-to-foot in down jacket and woollens, pointed out, and felt the shoulder straps of her borrowed bikini slinking south. Clamping towel to chest, she clambered into the horsebox before nakedness…
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The Simple Things (Digital) - 1 Issue, January 2024