Hastings Fishing
"Third-generation fisher woman Maggie has seen the fleet shrink to nothing. When marine conservationist Pete arrives with rules, she gives him a different education."
The Stade had been home to Hastings fishing boats for a thousand years. Now there were barely a dozen of us left, and the conservationists kept finding new ways to make the job impossible.
"You're Maggie Fletcher?"
The man blocking my path had clipboard written all over him—even if he hadn't been holding an actual clipboard. Government shirt, concerned expression, the posture of someone who'd learned about fishing from reports.
"And you're from the Marine Management Organisation. Here to tell me I can't catch what I've been catching for forty years."
"I'm here to find sustainable solutions. I'm Pete Lawrence."
"I don't need solutions from someone who's never hauled a net."
He kept coming back. Day after day, standing on the beach, watching me work. He asked questions I didn't want to answer; he listened to complaints I didn't expect him to hear. By week three, I'd learned he wasn't the enemy I'd assumed.
"Why do you do this job?" I asked finally. "You could push paper in London."
"Because I grew up in a fishing village in Cornwall." He was helping me sort the catch—something he'd started doing uninvited. "Watched the fleet die while officials made rules that didn't work. I went into this thinking I could make better rules."
"And have you?"
"I've made different rules. Whether they're better..." He shrugged. "The politics don't care about better."
"Then why keep trying?"
"Because people like you are still fighting. And someone official should be fighting with you, not against."
The first time I invited him onto my boat was professional—showing him what fishing actually looked like, rather than what reports described. But somewhere in the hours of hauling and sorting and talking, something shifted.
"You're different than I expected," he said as we headed back to shore.
"Expected an angry old woman?"
"Expected someone who'd given up. You haven't given up at all."
"Can't afford to. This is who I am. Without the boat, I'm just..." I trailed off.
"Just what?"
"Nothing. Nobody. A woman too big for fashion and too old for reinvention."
"That's not what I see." He moved closer, both of us swaying with the boat's motion. "I see someone strong enough to do this job alone. Someone who knows more about these waters than any scientist I've met. Someone who makes me understand why the fight matters."
"You shouldn't say things like that."
"Why not?"
"Because you're the government. Because we're supposed to be adversaries."
"We're supposed to be solving the same problem." His hand found mine. "Maggie. I know this is complicated. But I've been thinking about you for weeks, and if I don't say something, I'll regret it forever."
I kissed him on my own boat, in my own waters, and it felt like claiming something I'd forgotten I was allowed to want. His body was softer than mine—desk work, obviously—but his mouth was certain.
"Not here," I said. "My cottage. After we dock."
The cottage had been fishermen's for generations—small, practical, built to withstand weather rather than impress visitors. Pete looked around like he was seeing history.
"This is you. Completely."
"I'm not sure that's a compliment."
"It's the highest compliment I know." He pulled me close. "Real. Uncompromising. Built to last."
We made love while the sea moved outside, the same sea I'd worked my whole life. His hands learned my body with the same attention he'd brought to learning my work—careful, thorough, genuinely interested.
"You're beautiful," he said.
"I'm weathered."
"Like everything worth keeping." He moved inside me with surprising confidence. "The most beautiful things are the ones that survive."
We came together with the waves as rhythm, both of us finding something we'd stopped looking for. When I cried out, it was with the same voice I used to haul nets—strong, certain, absolutely present.
"Stay," I said afterward.
"Won't that cause problems? With the fishing community?"
"They've seen worse scandals than a fisherwoman taking up with a conservationist." I pulled him closer. "Besides, if we're together, you have to take my side in meetings."
"That's extremely unethical."
"So is everything else about this." I kissed his shoulder. "But we're doing it anyway."
He transferred to the local office. The sustainable fishing project he developed included input from actual fishermen—novel concept in government circles. And every evening, he comes home to my cottage, where the woman who was supposed to be his adversary has become something considerably more complicated.
The fleet's still shrinking. The politics still don't care about better. But we keep fighting—together now, rather than against each other. And the Stade still has boats, still has fishermen, still has at least one woman who refuses to give up what a thousand years of ancestors built.
Some battles can't be won alone. Some require finding allies in unexpected places. Pete came to regulate me; he stayed to love me. And that, more than any rule or policy, is what might actually save these waters.