Читать книгу How to Fall in Love... With Life - Cecelia Ahern, Cecelia Ahern - Страница 15

‘It is a warm, not hot, day when we go fossil hunting. The walk to the beach is challenging quicksand, boulder hopping, slippery breakwaters. One section is littered with the detritus of human life, a cliff fall has dumped the remnants of a landfill onto the water’s edge. There is beauty alongside the rusting engines and black putty-like blobs of oil-ridged ammonites emerge from boulders, fierce-white crystal strata run through pebbles. I become engrossed in scouring the beach for an elusive fossil, a vertebra perhaps. A tooth. A jawbone. I lose myself in a pretence. I am Mary Anning, the first fossil hunter. I am a pioneer. I am so obsessed with chasing glory that I don’t pay much attention to the sieving taking place at the shore. Who wants a tiny belemnite when larger, richer pieces await discovery? But my son is engaged with the ritual, the digging, the swirling, the washing. ‘Mum!’ I look up, catch the joy fizzing from his face. He holds up a tiny rock, makes his way slowly over and shows it to me, the tiny curl of an ammonite resting in the centre of his palm. ‘It’s a gold one, mum. For you. I found a gold one! Do you think it’s valuable?’ he asks. The iron pyrite, that has accumulated on this rock over millions of years, shines. Immeasurably so. I pick it up and fall in love with life a little more.’

Jenny Long