The Seaside Locket

The poignant find seemed to widen the divide even further... was there a way back for them?

- FRANCES DRAKE

The north-east wind blew T relentlessly and her thin coat gave little protection against the cold, but she pulled it more tightly about her.

Grains of sand had already found their way into her shoes, pricking at her toes as she shivered in the car park by the beach. She looked out across crashing waves to the distant horizon where rough water met a forbidding grey sky.

"Perfect!" Martin shouted above the howling wind and turned to his wife with a huge smile on his face.

"I suppose by perfect you mean only getting soaked rather than drenched," Jackie said, rather more sarcastically than she meant to.

She regretted being so harsh as she saw Martin's face fall. He was oblivious to her discomfort, not because he didn't care about her, but because he was so excited about his hobby.

"I thought you wanted to come metal detecting with me? We have the beach all to ourselves. Just the two of us." Jackie saw the earnest look in his eyes, something she'd been unable to resist in all their forty years of marriage.

"OK," she said, wearily. "Get the gear." He carefully unloaded his expensive metal detector, a top-of-the-range piece of kit. His pride and joy.

t hadn't always been like this. After hobbies. Jackie had been researching her family tree for years and was content, but Martin had been at a loss for months. Then a friend had suggested metal detecting.

He bought a cheap detector and went out once a month with his mate, but as his interest grew and the equipment got more specialised, it developed into an all-consuming passion. Jackie hardly saw him, and their holidays became staycations detecting in muddy fields rather than relaxing on sunny beaches.