Vicky woke some hours later with a stiff neck from dozing in an armchair, the events of the previous night still with her. She knew it was useless to dismiss them as dreaming. It wasn’t just the sudden blaze on the mound which had unnerved her, but a strange sensation which had pulsed through her as she fled, igniting something which flared for a moment then faded. But its memory was still there, and it troubled her.
She was glad Heledd had stayed over – solid, dependable Heledd, as down-to- earth as a gardener’s boot. True, Heledd had a head full of myth and legend, but she was calm in a crisis, and her chattering had helped pass the time until the sun rose, and bleached away the fears of the night. Unlike Vicky, who’d snapped out of every dream that night, Heledd was sound asleep on the sofa, wrapped in a blue fleece blanket, snoring gently.
They’d been in the same year at school, and even worked on a GCSE science project together, but had never really been friends. They’d lost touch once they left school and enrolled at different Universities. But Vicky had gone into Tanybryn branch library to sign the petition to keep it open, and to savour the memories while it was still there, and there was Heledd, showing an old man how to use the Internet. The ancient computer had frozen, but Vicky the IT graduate soon solved the problem. The girls recognized each other, and soon got into conversation. Vicky had also been looking for a tide table, as she wanted to go to the beach, so Heledd explained to her how to work out the movement of the tides by the phase of the moon.
‘When it’s full moon or new moon, the tide is out at noon and midnight. At half moon, it’s high tide at noon, and the tidal range is less dramatic,’ Heledd had explained.
When Heledd asked Vicky what she planned doing at the beach, Vicky told her she’d been a member of the Freediving and Finswimming club at Manchester Uni – and played Octopush, a form of underwater hockey. ‘There is a freediving club in Cardiff’, she’d explained, ‘but they only meet in term time, and it’s no good freediving at the pool – people would panic and think I was drowning. I love sea swimming anyway, although mum always thinks I’ll be swept away.’
‘Well, if you wanted’, Heledd said, ‘I could sit on the beach and read a book while you dived. That way, if you did get swept away, I could raise the alarm. Although I doubt there’s much of a risk – if the tide’s coming in you should be fine!’
So a few days later, when the tide was right, they took the bus to Swansea and spent an afternoon at a tiny rocky cove. Heledd sat on the warm cliffs, reading, looking for dolphins, and daydreaming – a perfect afternoon for her - while Vicky put on her goggles and practised fetching shells and pebbles from the sea floor. Neither actually said much to the other all day, and that suited them both fine. And as they lived so close to each other, they’d started hanging out.
That had been a few weeks ago, and in that time Vicky had become more settled in Cardiff. She was still missing her boyfriend Dave, and found it hard to accept that it would be another eleven months ‘til she saw him again. Heledd wasn’t much of a substitute, but she was easy-going and enjoyable company in her own way.