On the edge

Prologue

Ocean waves washed against the boulders and famous white cliffs of Dover, making a very distinctive sound as they crashed against the steep rock face at the edge of the sea. The wind blew cold, mercilessly tossed her shoulder-long, copper-red hair around and blew it into her face so harshly, she felt as if she were flogged; punished by the sea god to have had such a foolish idea as to dare take a walk at the cliffs so early in the morning.
From afar, Sue could see the sun peek through a thick veil of grey clouds.
"I should have brought a flashlight," she muttered to herself, realising that at almost quarter to eight on a cold January morning, the light of day wasn't quite generous enough yet to safely lead her way.
A bit short of breath and slightly shivering, she eventually reached the place where she and her father would sit. They would stay up late, bring covers, look at the night sky and listen to the relaxing sound of the sea. While some were scared by the moods and unpredictability of the ocean, Sue had always felt as if it was calling her to come closer; to not worry, to just take another step...
"It's the Sirens, child," her father would tell her.
"They sing to you with voices pure as morning dew and clear as a bell. They'll lure you into their abyss, be vigilante when you walk the cliffs!" he warned his daughter.
Of course, she had grown up to realise that there was no such thing as Sirens, but her fascination for the sea, the deep cold waters, and all the secrets it bore, had stayed the same. Sometimes she even thought to still be able to hear its calling.

"There we go, dad," Sue announced.
Out of her red backpack, she took an urn.
"The sea's wild today," she said with a smile and dared to stretch her neck a little further over the cliffs.

It was indeed. The flow had come during the night, and where the water usually was but about five feet deep, Sue now couldn't even see the ground.
Her father, Georges Reid, had been a simple man. His wife had left him for another man when their daughter was but four years old. Neither had ever heard from her again. Rumour had it she was living in Paris now and had had two other children; a boy and another girl.

"If she's happy, it's fine with me," her father had said on the only occasion Sue had ever addressed the matter.
"Your mother wasn't made for the small village life, I saw that the day I met her," he had said, and the girl Sue had been at the time couldn't help but wonder why he had brought her to St. Margret's Bay then.
It wasn't out of the civilised world, not far from Canterbury and even closer to Dover, but her mother dreamed of cities like London, or Paris for instance.
"Why didn't she take me with her?" Sue had asked her father.
He had gently caressed her cheek and smiled at her with a sad look in his blue eyes.
"She probably wouldn't want to tire out her darling daughter too much, with all that craving for adventure," he had told her.
And she had believed that for a long time, many years, before slowly growing aware that she hadn't been but a nuisance to her mother. Who wanted to drag a four-year-old along the way of making their great escape out of that small seaside village? Nobody, Sue figured, even less so if said child was the spitting image of her father, the very source of the boredom problem; a sturdy figure, a heart-shaped face, a narrow nose, and a head full of bright, copper-red hair. Her eyes, round, slightly droopy, and of a dark-brown colour, were the only thing her mother had been generous enough to share with the girl they used to call Red-Sue during her school years.
It hadn't always been easy, Georges had struggled quite a bit to feed himself and a child, to provide her with a warm room to sleep in and all the other things children need; books and pens, school uniforms and at least one pair of shoes to walk in. Somehow he had always found a way, and his daughter deeply admired him for that. How exactly he had managed to pay for all those things with nothing but the money he earned from selling souvenirs and antiquities, mostly to tourists, would always be a great mystery to her.

And then one day, when she was already twenty-one years old and had moved to Essex to study marine biology, she received a call.
"They say it's cancer," Sue remembered hearing her father tell her quietly.
"I'll be there," she had assured him, and all the pleading, all the begging had not been enough to stop her from dropping out of university to be by his side.
"I'll just pick up where I stopped, a bit later one, when you're fine," the young woman had assured her father that she hadn't given up on her dreams yet.
But he would never quite regain his full strength and Sue stayed to help him run the shop. About a year and a half ago then, the doctors had told them that the cancer had come back and that it had spread.
"You've won once, you'll win again,"
Words for which Georges Reid had been thankful, but words that he didn't really believe in. He had fought, battled, and given it all he had. But the illness had gotten the better of him eventually, and, in the end, he had submitted to it peacefully.
"When I look at you I know that although my own wife ran away from me, there are things I've done damn well," the dying man had joked.
Sue too had laughed wholeheartedly, sitting by his bed, until the tears flowed down her cheeks in streams.
"I'll miss you..." she had sobbed, hugging her father tightly; her voice weak and shaky.
"Don't worry child," he had tried to reassure her with a soft voice as he gently stroked the back of her head.
"First, you'll be a bit sad, but then you'll remember all the wonderful times we had together. All the nights we listened to the Sirens sing," Georges had said and gently smiled at his daughter.
"And along will come someone else to take your hand. Make sure it's someone you'd jump off those cliffs with."

"You're free now, father," Sue said and let her eyes wander across the water.
How vast it was, and yet it seemed as if she could see where it ended; at the horizon, where the ocean kissed the sky.

"Be free now," the red-haired continued, thinking about how much of an enchained man her father must have been during his life.

Bound to all the responsibilities an unfaithful wife had left him with, bearing alone all the worries parents are supposed to share. They must have felt heavy on his back from time to time, his shoulders as if they weren't strong enough to carry on. And when she opened the urn, the wind blew her father's ashes away, taking them with him where ever it might have been heading. Of course, Sue hadn't been all too careful about the wind's direction and had a great amount of her father's burned mortal remains blown into her face. They made her sneeze and her eyes gritty, and she couldn't really see a thing as she was scratching them ruggedly, dropping the urn; hearing it burst as it hit the white rock wall.