Man proposing on a coastal path at sunset, woman surprised

**The Proposal** When Marion knelt on the sun-baked path, Lisa thought she was stopping to retie her laces. They had been walking for over an hour along the cliff path, hardly a wisp of breeze coming off the sea, talking about nothing very important: what to cook later on, whether getting a takeaway might be easier, and the best plan B if the rain due the next day actually swept in So when Marion dropped to one knee, Lisa almost walked another step before realising she wasn't doing up her laces. Instead, she was holding out a small, velvet-lined box. A box with a ring inside it. For a moment neither spoke. Lisa looked down at the ring, then back at the face turned up towards hers. It was the face she saw first thing every morning: intelligent, determined, occasionally impossible. The face that appeared in doorways when she was trying to work, that left half-drunk cups of tea around the house, that always reached for her in sleep without quite waking. And yet there it was—that face she knew off by heart, stripped suddenly of its usual certainty. "Will you marry me?" she said. It took a moment for the words to settle. Then the answer appeared before the word itself. It travelled through Lisa's smile, through the tears gathering at the corners of her eyes, through the step she took towards her. "Yes," she whispered. "A hundred times yes."