Chapter 15
I rushed out of the hut and on to the beach, where Antoine was racing towards the water. There were kids dragging surfboards into the waves, while others stood and watched from the sand.
Antoine was yelling in French.
I jogged after him and watched as the people in the water stopped what they were doing.
‘Sortez de l’eau!’ he shouted. Furious. As if there was an imminent shark attack or something. The groups on the beach just watched him and when the surfers didn’t listen, or maybe didn’t obey him quickly enough, he went into the water himself, up to his waist and screamed at them again.
They listened this time, and I watched as surfboards turned round one by one and they all paddled towards the shore.
I was about to go and see if Antoine was OK, but I was beaten to it by Sébastian, Delphine and Lili, who had surrounded him in the sea. Sébastian patted him on the shoulder and Lili hugged him from one side.
Antoine didn’t leave the water until everyone was on the sand. And they stood there and listened to him talk like he was the teacher of a disruptive class.
An awkward silence at the end of his speech filled the air with tension. Then Lili shouted, ‘Let’s party!’
They all walked back towards the bonfire, and I took my chance to talk to Antoine. He was just staring at the ocean when I reached him, taking deep breaths that seemed to synchronize in time with the tide. So I just stared out at the water too.
‘Are you OK?’ I asked.
He hesitated before speaking. Before even moving. Like he was stuck in some kind of trance.
‘The water. It is dangerous,’ he said, and I wasn’t even sure if it was to me. Eventually he turned to me. ‘You want to party?’ And he didn’t give me time to think of an answer, he just grabbed my hand, and we walked towards the bonfire.
The way he took my hand was gentle. Not tightly like I would have expected.
His skin was rough, I assumed from years of feeling their way round surfboards, but his touch was soft, like he didn’t want to crush something delicate.
And I didn’t pull away, even though Felix’s face filled my head and guilt pooled in my stomach.
I liked it. And I didn’t want it to stop.
When we got to the bonfire, Sébastian greeted us, followed by Lili and Delphine. I saw Delphine glance at our hands before I pulled mine away, reaching up to push hair behind my ear.
‘Une bière, Margot?’ Sébastian handed me a can of beer. ‘I told you he was le flic.’ Sébastian grinned at me and Antoine said something to him in French that made him laugh.
Delphine started talking to the group in French when Antoine stopped her.
‘We should all speak English. Pour notre invitée.’ He glanced at me as he said it and I smiled gratefully.
I knew a bit of French, but it was too fast to catch and as soon as I’d managed to translate a word they’d moved on to something else.
Delphine rolled her eyes. ‘OK,’ she conceded.
We walked down the beach a bit. Not too far that we couldn’t feel the heat of the fire, but not too close that the singing drowned out our voices. Then Delphine and Lili dropped to the sand, leaning against each other comfortably. Sébastian sat beside them, then me, then Antoine, in a circle.
‘Alors, Margot. Tell us about you, have you wanted to learn to surf for a long time?’ Lili sipped on her can of beer and smiled at me. There was something warm about Lili, like an aura that drew you in and made you feel immediately welcome in her presence.
‘Oh, no. Not at all.’ And as soon as it came out of my mouth, I knew it was the wrong thing to say. Delphine made a noise, half laugh, half snort. Lili elbowed her. ‘I used to swim. Competitively,’ I said, trying to pull it back.
‘Ah, a swimmer,’ Sébastian said. ‘Antoine was a swimmer too.’ He nodded towards Antoine, who didn’t say anything.
‘Oh yeah?’ I looked at him to elaborate.
He didn’t, only saying, ‘Bastian, tell Margot about your first surf competition.’ Antoine grinned at Sébastian.
‘Oh no, Margot, you do not want to hear this. It will make you not want to surf at all.’ Sébastian put his face in his hands and shook his blonde head.
‘You have to tell me now,’ I pleaded.
‘OK, you win. The Biarritz Junior Open.’ He jumped up on to the sand in a surfer’s stance and Lili groaned. ‘The sun was shining. The waves were perfect. I paddled my little arms out so hard.’ He made a paddling motion.
‘You have never been little.’ Delphine actually cracked a smile when she said this.
‘OK, I paddled my big eleven-year-old arms out with the confidence of Antoine. I was ready. The horn, it goes off and I see this perfect wave. The most beautiful wave you have ever seen. I got up, and I raise my arms in victory before I had even caught it, fell off backwards and knocked myself out with my board.’
Sébastian mimed a thud, then sat down and looked sad.
‘Oh, poor Sébastian.’ Lili leaned over and kissed his cheek.
He smiled and pointed at his forehead. ‘Five stitches and they have called me le clown des vagues ever since.’
I leaned over to see the scar on his head.
‘That is a very sad story,’ I said, playing along.
‘But it was not that sad because in the hospital was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. A nurse who did my stitches. I was in love.’ Sébastian winked at me, and I laughed.
‘Delphine, tell Margot about La Vague d’Or,’ Antoine prompted.
She shrugged. ‘There is nothing to know. I came fourth.’
‘You were amazing,’ said Lili, stroking Delphine’s leg.
‘Amazing is winning. I lost.’ She shook her head. And it was the first time that I felt like I was on the same page as Delphine. This was exactly how I’d felt when I was swimming. To win was everything. Ecstasy, euphoria. Second place? Might as well have come last.
‘You did not lose!’ Lili protested.
Delphine took a drink of beer. She shook her head. ‘This time, I will win.’
‘Yes!’ Sébastian leaned in and clinked his drink against hers. ‘Et, Antoine?’ Sébastian looked at him and Antoine smiled before pushing his hair back off his face.
‘My first competition? I was thirteen.’
‘Les Jeunes Vagues?’ Lili asked.
‘Ouais,’ Antoine nodded. ‘I had been training for months. Everybody expected me to win. And I did well. I had the highest score when I went into the finals. But during the final, I saw a kid who struggled with the current.’
Everyone was silent as Antoine told his story. There was no laughing like there had been for Sébastian, or encouragement like for Delphine, just silence.
‘And nobody else noticed. And he was getting tired trying to paddle. Then I helped him out and missed my heat.’ The way he said it, like he was so desperate to make it sound as if it was no big deal, made me think it had been the total opposite.
I watched Antoine, who wasn’t looking at anyone now, just staring into the sand.
‘To Antoine.’ Lili held up her drink. We all did, except Antoine, who didn’t have one.
‘What about you, Lili?’ I asked, interested to know her story too.
She grinned and glanced at Delphine before looking back at us. ‘Not my first, but my favourite. A year ago. I had been surfing maybe for three years, and I still was not good.’ Delphine nudged her in support.
‘C’est vrai!’ Lili laughed. ‘I had no business being at any competition. And I wiped out in the first heat. But I stayed to watch the finals. And this girl?’ She turned to Delphine. ‘She was riding the waves like she owned them.’
I smiled at the story. ‘And that was when you started going out?’ I asked.
Lili snorted. ‘Non, then Delphine went out with Antoine.’ Lili flicked sand towards him.
‘And then Lili stole my girlfriend,’ Antoine said.
‘You were never meant for each other, and I did not steal, it was at least a month after you two broke up. Your true love is still to come.’ Lili smiled, then turned and kissed Delphine gently on the lips.
‘I think it is time to go,’ Antoine said. Then he stood up.
‘Le flic returns,’ Sébastian said before standing too. I pulled myself off the sand and watched as Antoine yelled across to the bonfire.
‘C’est l’heure. La marée monte.’
Sébastian was standing beside me. ‘He is telling everyone to leave because the tide is coming in,’ he translated.
‘Ah OK.’ I expected it to be like parties at home where nobody listened and just kept on drinking, but they didn’t. They all started to make their way down the beach, away from the dying bonfire.
When everyone else had left, we helped to tidy up the beach.
Sébastian offered to help put out the fire, but Antoine shook his head and picked up a metal bucket that he took towards the water. I jogged to catch up with him.
‘Do you want help?’ I asked, leading with that before I thanked him for this evening.
‘You should go home now,’ Antoine said. His tone was cold. Serious. I watched him bend over and fill up the bucket of water before turning and walking back towards the bonfire, while I just stood there, unsure of what to do with my hands.
‘I’ll see you at my lesson tomorrow?’
‘Six a.m.,’ he replied. Any of the softness he’d shown in the hut felt like a distant memory.
‘That’s very early,’ I complained, trying to tease it back.
‘Six is when the real surfers catch waves. Unless you are not serious about learning?’ He looked at me briefly.
‘I’ll see you at six,’ I said, and he nodded his head.
‘Tu jeu avec le feu.’ Delphine said in my direction when we got back. She glanced at Antoine after she’d said the words, which were slow and clear enough for me to translate.
‘You’re playing with fire.’
I wasn’t ‘playing’ with anything. I was getting surf lessons. And even though at that moment Felix’s lovely face filled my thoughts, I chose to ignore what she’d said.
On the way back towards the campsite, before they branched off on to another path, Sébastian chatted away excitedly about surfing, but I was only half listening.
I couldn’t get Antoine out of my head. The way he’d held my hand out of nowhere, how he’d looked at me, how his mood had suddenly changed into something darker.
And then there was Felix, and the sunflower date that felt like another life altogether.