Then, just as suddenly as they had started, the builders stopped work. When they did turn up, they would mention waiting for materials, or the fact that the plasterer was behind schedule. Some of the upstairs floors had been replaced. The local pine floorboards were pale and new, with a certain MFI quality to them, and I knew that I needed to stain them. There was rubble everywhere. Some electric sockets worked, and others did not. Many walls were crisscrossed with snakes of blue plastic, which carried wires to the approximate positions of future light switches and sockets, and stopped abruptly. After the electrician’s burst of autumn activity, I had two working sockets downstairs, and three upstairs. We managed surprisingly well with a tangle of extension leads that Greg and I worked out together. Occasionally, the electricity supply would give up, but we had torches waiting in all appropriate spots, and I was easily able to light my way around the house unplugging unnecessary appliances, then to the fuse box to flick the switch back up. In fact, I had previously had no idea that things like that were so easy. The builders stopped talking about finishing before Christmas.
Rosie was so pleased with the access I was giving her that she told me I should think about getting more TV work.
‘You’re actually a bit of a natural,’ she told me. ‘You really know how to relax in front of the lens.’
‘I’m not a natural,’ I told her, ‘I’m just too tired to give a fuck.’
‘You swore again!’ she said, with an admiring nod. ‘You never seemed the type before.’
One morning, early in November, I dropped Alice at school. I always had a rush of wellbeing after taking her into the classroom. I loved the way she instantly switched to French when we arrived. Her teacher had told me that Alice’s French was now so fluent that she treated her exactly like a French child.
After leaving her, I drove home, trying to ignore the gnawing emptiness. Only the fact that I knew that Greg was waiting for me with coffee stopped me from driving and driving, at random, until something happened.
I stepped over the threshold and called, ‘Hi!’ Greg’s voice answered from upstairs. I heard his footsteps bounding down, louder and closer by the second, until he was standing in front of me.
‘Hey, Ems,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Some guy just called for you.’
‘French?’
‘English. He said he’d ring back later.’
My heart was suddenly thumping. I clasped my hands together to stop them trembling.
‘Was it Matt?’ I asked, as steadily as I could. I had been waiting for him to get in touch about the practical things. I felt I had been waiting forever. It seemed he had abandoned us entirely. Sometimes I wanted to ring him, but I could not bear the idea of speaking to Jo or, indeed, to him. I had no idea how I would feel if I heard his voice. He had left me in no doubt about the fact that I had never meant anything to him.
Greg smiled and shook his head. ‘Definitely not. He wouldn’t say who he was. Said he’d call back tonight. Anyway, I’ve made a plan. Let’s go to the beach and hire surfboards.’ He looked at me expectantly. I forced a little smile at him. Greg was scarcely more than two years younger than me, but usually I felt that he was eighteen and I was about fifty-five. Today, he was wearing a pair of yellow cotton trousers that flapped halfway down his shins, and a T-shirt with the Red Bull symbol on it and some Thai writing. It was unusually warm this particular morning, but still, he must have been freezing.
‘Nice idea.’ I was not really concentrating ‘I’ve got so much on today. Tell you what, let’s plan a beach day. We can take Alice again. Wednesday?’
Greg stepped closer. ‘I think today’s the day, actually. Alice is a great kid but I want you to have some fun without being a mummy. Geoff said you wanted to surf. You said you wanted to surf. You said Matt laughed at you for wanting to surf. So, hey? Alice is in school till half four. It’s not even half nine. I’ll drive. Rosie’s in Bordeaux today so it’s just us.’
‘I . . .’ I tried to think of a valid objection. ‘I was going to rake the leaves,’ I said, lamely. ‘And the builders might need me.’ I looked around. I could hear the masons hammering in the old kitchen, making it ready for the new one which was due two weeks ago.
‘They don’t need you. And I’ll rake the leaves if you really think it’s essential. Tomorrow.
Mañana
.’ He took the car keys out of my hand and set off back towards the car. ‘Got your handbag? I’ve sorted everything else.’
I started trying to put on my wetsuit awkwardly, under the cover of a towel. The beach was far less busy than it had ever been over the summer. There was really no point in being coy.
‘Look away,’ I instructed Greg, and I stripped off and stepped, naked, into the wetsuit. It was much easier that way.
I knew I was bony, now. Parts of my skeleton jutted out where they had never jutted before. Yet, somehow, I still had a wobbly, untoned stomach, and huge thighs and an enormous bottom that stayed cold long after the rest of me had warmed up.
I looked, again, out to sea. There were some clouds building on the horizon. Around twenty surfers were out beyond where the waves were breaking. The waves were big and splashy. They would knock me down instantly.
‘I think I’d be better off watching,’ I told Greg casually.
‘Bollocks will you,’ he answered equably. He picked up his board, held it under his arm, and walked towards the sea. I watched for a moment, then picked mine up and followed him. I felt self-conscious, pretending to be a surfer, but I also felt liberated. Look! I wanted to shout. Look at me! And the great thing was that nobody did look at me, because Mimizan beach was always full of surfers, and I was blending in with them. My stride became more purposeful.
There was a sprinkling of people on the beach. Some walked dogs. Others changed into wetsuits; and a few people just sat on the sand, wrapped up in fleeces and scarves, and looked at the sea. Nobody noticed Greg and me. If they were aware of us, it was just as another couple of surfers. I was always jealous when I saw people in wetsuits walking past, heading with purpose for the shore. Surfers looked careless. They never looked worried. They never seemed to be thinking about broken relationships built on lies, or single parenthood, or the fact that their money was running out. They never appeared to be missing mothers they had barely known. They just seemed to live in the moment.
I decided that, while I was in the water, I would do my best to live in the moment too. Looking at the size of the waves, I believed I would have no choice.
We stopped at the edge. Shallow water was lapping around my bare feet.
‘Right,’ I said, with a nervous laugh. ‘What now?’
‘OK. We’ll take it slowly. First of all, let’s get wet. Just for fun.’
Greg and I left our boards on the sand and walked into the sea together. When I reached the point where the water was past my knees, I began to feel extremely nervous. I could feel the current dragging at me and I remembered the scary exhilaration of the previous time this had happened. We stepped a little further and the waves were suddenly breaking on us. I jumped over them, laughing despite myself. When a huge wave was heading towards me, I leapt as high as I could, and felt myself being carried up, while my legs disappeared from underneath me. I flapped around, trying to regain balance, then gave up and let the water carry me in towards the shore. My head dipped underwater and I spun around, but before I could panic, my whole body scraped along sand, and I was thoroughly beached. It was less frightening than it had been the previous time. Laughing, I got up.
‘OK,’ I told Greg. ‘Wet. Now what?’
‘Now,’ he said, ‘we sit down.’ We sat together on the sand. I was surprised at this development and watched my brother, my cousin, quizzically to see how he planned to teach me to surf sitting on the beach.
‘Right. Look at these guys out there.’ I followed the direction of his finger and gazed at the black figures beyond breaking point. One of them paddled furiously and was suddenly, miraculously, standing on his board. We watched him surfing in, halfway towards the shore, before he fell off. His board flew in one direction, and his head popped up next to it.
‘I wish I could do that,’ I sighed.
‘You can. Now, let’s watch them properly. You see them all sitting there, looking at the horizon? What are they looking at?’
‘Waves.’
‘Yes. There’s a nice set coming through.’
‘What’s a set?’
‘It’s a group of waves. They come in sets. Right. These guys are all jockeying for position. They’re trying to get to the best point, where the most obvious peak of the wave is going to be. There’s a lot of unspoken rules about who gets to go when but don’t worry about them for now. See? This guy’s there.’ Greg pointed. ‘He’s got it, the best place. He’s going for it. See, he’s turning, facing the beach, paddling away from the wave to pick up speed. Right. See that? He’s got up on his feet.’
‘How did he know when to do that?’
‘When your board goes from flat to vertical. It’s easy to jump up then. And there he is. Dropping down the face of the wave. And a tight bottom turn. Very nice. So he’s bringing the board right the way round and now he’s facing back up. See that? He stuck his hand in the water to give him a bit of support. Nice. And he’s back up. There. He kicked off the top of the lip. And he’s cruising back down. That’s a nice wide bottom turn so the white water doesn’t get too close. And a lovely finish. There you go.’
He was looking at me expectantly.
‘Wow,’ I said. ‘OK. Can you do that?’
‘On a good day, yeah.’
‘Really?’
Greg smiled at me. ‘It’s the greatest feeling in the world. And I have to say, you live impressively close to the best surf in Europe.’
We went into the water, to waist depth. Greg left his board on the sand.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Here we go. Lie down on the board.’
I made a couple of false jumps, falling back into the water, but got up there in the end. I lay on my stomach, already feeling like a professional.
‘Great stuff,’ said Greg. ‘There’s some white water coming now. It’ll be a bit bouncy.’
‘Bouncy?’ I was regretting this.
‘Yes. But you’ll feel the surge when the wave comes and you’ll feel the power take you. Now when I say paddle, you need to paddle hard. Once you feel the board being taken along, taken by the wave power not by your arm power, then you need to jump to your feet.’ I nodded. ‘OK,’ he said suddenly. ‘Paddle!’
I started splashing around with my hands. The wave picked me up and left me behind. I frowned. This was not how it was supposed to be.
‘That wasn’t paddling,’ Greg said sternly. ‘Let’s try again. Your arms are supposed to be working here. They’re supposed to hurt like hell tomorrow. Give it a proper paddle this time. Right, go! Paddle!’
I paddled as hard as I could. This time I was carried along for half a second before the wave surged out from underneath me and left me staring after it. The next time I fell off as soon as it reached me. Then I managed a reasonable paddle. Then I tried standing up, and fell in. Then I did the same thing twenty more times. I was wet and my face was frozen, and I was completely failing to stand on my board, and I was happy.
‘OK,’ Greg announced. ‘We’re going down the beach. Over there, where they’re breaking.’
I followed him down the sand, and paddled out to waist depth, again. Again, I paddled unsuccessfully for wave after wave. Again I fell in and got a face full of water. Again, I came up wanting to try again.
In the end, it came. I paddled as hard and fast as I could for a wave, and when the board surged forward and began to tip down, Greg yelled, ‘Stand up!’ I got to my feet and threw my arms out to the sides. I had scarcely had time to realise that I was standing when Greg shouted: ‘Lean down on your front foot!’
I took my weight off my back foot, and felt the back of the board being swept round. I was almost parallel to the wave. For five long seconds, I felt myself gliding along, standing on the water. It was by far the best thing I had ever done.
I relived that moment on a loop for the rest of the day. I was too thrilled to mind that, while we were out, the builders had taken up the hall tiles and left the floor as bumpy earth. I barely noticed the mud that we trampled all over the new upstairs floorboards. As I read Alice her school library book, I was standing on my wave. I had never imagined that I would be able to do it, let alone on my first day. All my thoughts were focused on doing it again. I wanted to buy my own board. I wanted to surf several times a week. I wanted to get good. It had been a very long time since I had been excited by anything. In fact, I had never been unguardedly enthusiastic about anything in my life before, least of all a physical activity.
Alice’s book was called
Belle la Coccinelle
and, on her orders, I was translating it from French to English as I went along. This made for a clunky and bizarre bedtime story but Alice didn’t seem to care. She never let me read to her in French. I guessed it was because my accent wasn’t acceptable. She was cuddled up against me, sucking her thumb.
Greg’s head appeared round the door. ‘Em! Phone. It’s that same bloke again.’
I looked at Alice. ‘Can Greg finish the story?’
She nodded, and I passed him the book. Greg took one look at the page.
‘This is in French! Can’t I read you something else?’
‘Yes. You can read
The Snail and the Whale
.’
‘Sounds more my scene.’
I left them leaning back on Alice’s
Toy Story
pillow and settling in to a new book. The cordless phone was on the floor outside the bedroom door, and I picked it up with trepidation.
‘Hello?’ I asked it, almost whispering.
‘Emma. Pete.’
I padded downstairs and shut myself in the dining room, which was both cold and dark. It was currently doubling as a temporary kitchen, while we waited for the perpetually delayed arrival of the new one. It had a fridge, microwave and kettle, though no water supply. ‘I thought it had to be you,’ I said, nervous and angry and unsure how to handle myself. I told myself to stay in control of my feelings. The surf had made me confident, and I knew I could easily be very, very nasty to Pete.