The Pebblewick Chronicles - Chapter 8 - Tuesday
Tuesday A Quiet Morning The following Tuesday began with an unease I could not quite explain. I felt it almost the moment I stepped out of my front door. Nothing was visibly wrong. The sky was clear enough, the sea beyond the rooftops looked calm, and Harbour Street lay where it always had. Yet there was something in the air, some faint disturbance beneath the ordinary rhythm of the morning, that refused to leave me alone. The road into Pebblewick was strangely still. No cars passed. Few people were about. Even the gulls were quiet. That, more than anything else, unsettled me. Normally I could hear them long before I reached the harbour. Pebblewick’s gulls considered dawn a suitable time to conduct lengthy and often heated debates concerning fish, territory, and matters known only to themselves. That morning they seemed to have lost the urge to argue. A handful perched silently upon chimney pots and rooftops. One sat upon the harbour wall watching me with what...