Reluctance

In Bridgwater, a colleague and I took a hire car in which we were to collect another colleague in Glastonbury and another in Westbury. Two of these I was to drop in separate parts of London before taking the third to Walton-on-the-Naze and returning to Hemel Hempstead. With only sideways glimpses of the Tor, the White Horse, Stonehenge, I smoked a cigarette beneath a full moon, flicked the amber end into the black North Sea. The satisfying fizz, the filter bobbing on the breakers at my feet, I turned my back to the beach.