Escape

She was only there, standing still. She looked out across the bay, her mind as still calm an empty as the beach in front of her, with the sea stretching out towards the distant horizon.

She had thought she had escaped, that she was free.

But….

The tide in her mind changed and her thoughts inched their way across her empty beach mind, washing in the flotsam of her life.

Her empty life.

She had always enjoyed the contrast in this escape from her hectic career to the single week here, now. But, this time, this week, she had been haunted by the ghosts of her childhood when most of their family holidays were spent in this same place. Everywhere she looked, she saw a time long lost, but unforgotten. Times when she had been happy, times she had been alive with the uncomplicated life of a child on a beach in summer.

"I'm just getting old," she said aloud to the beach, then glancing around guiltily at the sudden volume of her voice, which had caused a brief fluttering amongst the nearest crowd of gulls. But she was alone.

She was always alone.

She had wanted - needed - the career… or, so she thought. At the time the long climb up the greasy pole had been her whole life - excepted for this one special week, this week was the only thing she had not sacrificed to the career god. She had smashed through the glass ceiling and the smug male condescension. Now she was at the top. She was at the top, and all she could do was look down. It seemed a very, very long way down and she was so alone.