A stroll on a Friday afternoon down the seafront!! - a short story by Maria-Elena Heed

It was the end of a hard working week, on a warm sunny afternoon, I took the road along the seafront. The sea was calm and blue, giving me the impression I was looking at a blue blanket. I decided to park the car somewhere along the seafront to walk down the promenade to the pier and back. This walk would usually take about a good hour at a fast pace but this time I wasn't in a hurry I was going to take it slowly. I needed to unwind and clear my head to forget the busy week I had at work.

The promenade was buzzing with people walking by, children running, playing and laughing. 

A mother was walking in front of me with her two young girls who were skipping happily alongside her. One of the little girls asked if they could have an ice cream: Mummy, mummy!! could we have an ice-cream, we're so hot, an ice cream will cool us down, she smiled. The mum said: of course my pup, you both were good girls at the doctors, you deserve a treat. Both girls ran to the ice-cream van which could be seen at a near distance. The girls joined the queue alongside the other children waiting patiently for their turn. They both knew what ice-cream they wanted, the older girl wanted a 99 and the younger girl a lemon calippo, both girls happy with their choice of ice-cream kept walking in front of their mum. The weather was so warm that their ice-cream slowly melted on their hands. The older little girl became so annoyed to see her ice-cream melting over her hand. The mum tried to help by licking her ice-cream to stop it from melting further. This was the worst thing her mummy could've done, the little girl looked at her mummy, stamping the floor with anger and screaming at the top of her voice: mummy don't do that!! She started crying inconsolable and wasn't listening to mummy. By this time the ice-cream was trickling down  her fingers, down to her arm and onto her clothes. Mummy’s patience was running out and said: Listen to mummy, if you don't stop crying I will take that ice-cream out of your hand and it will go in the bin. And suddenly, I came back to my space remembering that my daughter and my grandchildren were coming over the weekend to visit us. I could see me grinning with joy . I loved the time we spent together when they came over to see us. We usually took the girls to the pier for the rides and ice-creams, and they loved going down the beach too to play in the sand, making sand castles and dipping their feet in the sea no matter what the weather was like. 

I turned around, and went home to get the rooms ready for them.