Chapter 21
I tried not to dwell on what had happened with Felix. But he hadn’t written back after my last message, and it really pissed me off. I was a pushover with Theo, and look where that got me. Well, I wasn’t going to be the same with Felix. He could apologize.
So I didn’t even feel guilty that I spent the whole of the next week with Antoine, surfing early mornings at the main beach, supervising Rue and Wren at their lessons, which they’d loved so much that we booked more, surfing with Sébastian, Delphine and Lili, and late afternoons surfing at the cove with Antoine until the sun was setting.
At the end of the sessions we’d sit on the rocks, eating ham-and-cheese baguettes and watching the sun go down.
I basked in Antoine’s encouragement, which had become more frequent and more complimentary with each lesson.
I didn’t give myself the space to think about Felix’s silence, or Ari and Theo and whatever they were doing at home.
I didn’t care about any of it. I was focused, the way I used to be in the pool.
At least that’s what I told myself anyway.
And there was something else. Something that hung in the air between me and Antoine.
It was in the way he looked at me when he thought I wasn’t watching, and in the way his fingers lingered just a few seconds longer when he was showing me a new technique.
And that electricity? It hadn’t disappeared.
If anything, it was getting harder to ignore.
And on one of those evenings, staring at the blurred gold horizon on the sparkling water, sitting beside Antoine and dreaming about competing in La Vague d’Or, my phone buzzed.
FELIX: Can we meet? There is something I want to show you. Tonight?
I froze and just stared at the message as if I was trying to translate it. And I guess I was.
‘Everything is OK?’ Antoine looked at me, concerned.
Over the last few days I’d noticed how observant he was.
If I’d a pain somewhere, it was like he almost knew about it before I did and demanded that we rest. When I was quiet because Rue had cried when I told her I was going out again, he teased it out of me almost immediately.
So when I replied, ‘Yeah … just family stuff,’ I knew he knew I was lying.
And he didn’t push it or ask again. But it was there, in the air, when the atmosphere changed from something easy to an awkward silence.
I hesitated before replying. I’d deliberately stopped myself from thinking about Felix, but when I let him in, my gut response wasn’t to be cold or unresponsive, it was to give him a chance.
ME: OK. Where?
FELIX: I’ll pick you up at 9. Dress warmly
The message from Felix was just something I couldn’t ignore. There was so much we needed to talk about. That day, at his house. How perfect it had been until everything fell apart. But there was this uneasiness, like I was betraying whatever this was that I’d built with Antoine.
When Antoine’s van pulled into the campsite, he didn’t turn off the engine.
‘OK, thanks. See you later?’ I asked, trying to force some cheeriness into my tone.
‘Later?’ he replied, like he was demanding clarification.
‘Later, like tomorrow?’ I offered, tailing off as my own awkwardness closed in on me.
‘You should take your board,’ Antoine said, then got out of the van. I followed him, then loitered a few metres away, tracing the dusty ground with my sandal.
His jaw was tight when he brought me my board. And that was it, just a handover, like he was the teacher and I was the student. Professional. But cold. Then he got back into his van and I watched him drive away.
Back at the caravan, Mum, Dad, Rue and Wren were playing Jack Change It outside.
Wren grinned when she saw me. ‘Margot! Come and play too! Rue keeps cheating.’
I leaned over to look at Rue’s cards and motioned to Wren to try to change direction. She smiled at me.
‘You playing, Gogo?’ Dad asked hopefully.
‘I can’t. Sorry. I’m meeting Felix. He’ll be here any minute, and I need to get changed.’
‘Felix? You haven’t mentioned him all week,’ Mum said. ‘He was asking after you today when we had lunch at the Brasserie.’ I knew what she was doing, trying to tease info out of me. But Rue changed the subject.
‘Told you she wouldn’t play,’ she said angrily.
‘We’ll hang out tomorrow?’ I offered, hoping Mum and Dad would jump in and save me. But they didn’t.
‘She means it,’ I heard Wren say as I walked inside.
I had a quick shower, washing the salt from my hair before putting on shorts and a grey hoody.
My hair was still wet when Felix arrived. There he was, talking to Mum, Dad, Rue and Wren, who looked a lot happier than they had when they were talking to me twenty minutes ago.
When I walked outside, he looked up immediately and smiled.
And there it was. The Felix that had made me feel so wanted, when all I wanted to do now was cry.
I gave him a half smile, because that was all I had.
There was still so much in the way. My head was a mess.
He’d hurt me with his silence. I’d opened up about Rue, about my panic attack.
I’d had sex with him. And I guess I just thought we were worth more than this weird silence.
Then there was Antoine.
And I didn’t even know how to explain that to myself.
‘I won’t be late,’ I said to Mum and Dad before following Felix down the path.
We walked through a part of the campsite that I hadn’t explored yet. In silence. So many times, it felt like someone was going to say something, just for nothing to come out.
The lane opened on to a coastal path. And that’s when he spoke.
‘Careful.’ He turned to me and reached for my arm, but I moved it before he could touch me, making it look like I was just fixing my hair. I wasn’t ready, not after I’d given so much of myself to him. ‘It is dark,’ he continued. ‘You must watch your step. Hold on to me if you like.’
He walked ahead and held out his hand behind him. And he wasn’t wrong. It was dangerous. The path was tiny and when I stumbled on a rock, I reached for his hand and felt the comforting warmth of his skin as he closed his fingers round mine.
We walked until we reached the clifftop.
‘Voilà,’ said Felix.
And there it was. The whole of the main beach. I could see Antoine’s hut, the length of the sand and of course the ocean, which was a deep midnight blue now, matched by a sky that was dotted with stars.
But no, he couldn’t just do this. Bring me here, like it was going to fix everything. And I knew he was hurting, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t hurting too.
‘You hurt me, you know. The silence, after …’
His hand was in his hair. ‘I know. I –’
‘We shared something special. I don’t just do that with everyone. It was important, at least it was to me anyway, and then you just disappeared.’ Angry tears stung my eyes, and I wiped them away.
‘I did not want to hurt you. That day, it was important to me too. I just …’
‘What?!’
‘It is hard for me to let people close. It feels like it will be OK, and then I panic. I get scared that they will be taken away …’ He let the words hang there in the air, leaving me to catch them and feel them and work out what I was going to do with them all at once.
And I got that. The terrible tragedy that he’d been through, of course I understood the panic.
And I think that’s what hurt the most, that he couldn’t trust me to understand.
‘You can’t lose me by caring about me, Felix,’ I said, wrapping my arms round my body to try to protect myself from the breeze that had picked up, and from whatever words were coming next.
‘I can. You will be gone at the end of the summer, and it will be worse than being alone. I will know what I will be missing. You are so special, Margot.’
My stomach turned. The way it did when Rue had to go for another appointment or injection.
Like I desperately wanted to protect him but couldn’t.
I reached for his hand and felt it tremble.
I didn’t have a solution. It didn’t feel like it was just a summer romance.
When I thought of those, I imagined a kind of wild, fleeting passion that burned intensely before fizzling out as summer ended.
It wasn’t like that. It felt deeper than that.
Like coal that still glowed with warmth, underneath the ashes.
‘We don’t have to ruin the time we do have,’ I said quietly, scared my voice would shake.
He laughed gently. ‘You make it sound simple.’
‘It’s not. But pushing me away just means you’ll lose me now instead of later,’ I said as I hunkered down on the ground against a rock and held out my hand for Felix to sit too.
We sat there for a minute, staring at the beach, at the ocean, up at the stars.
‘You can see everything from here,’ I said.
And then it hit me. ‘You watch the beaches …’
Felix cleared his throat. ‘Every morning. Early. Before I go to work. I have to watch.’
I hooked my arm through his and leaned my head on his shoulder.
‘Gabriel drowned on the fifth of August. Three years ago tomorrow. On that beach.’
I sat up. ‘Oh, Felix. I’m so sorry.’
Felix stared out at the water. ‘It was my fault. I was with him. But I couldn’t … I just couldn’t save him.’
‘The ocean is so dangerous, and you were so young. It wasn’t your fault. I’m sure of that.’ I said it with as much conviction as I could muster.
He just shook his head and looked at his feet.
‘That’s why you watch? To protect people?’
He shook his head again. ‘I try. I phone the coastguard if I see someone in trouble. I tell myself that it is the perfect place to keep people safe. But really? I think it is just because it is safe here. A safe distance. I cannot be close enough to fail all over again.’
We sat in silence. Our fingers threaded together. Looking out over the ocean.
‘I should have told you earlier. Because I knew earlier … that you were special.’ His voice almost lost in the wind.
‘You’re telling me now,’ I said, an empty hollow of guilt in my gut as Antoine flashed in my head.
‘I do not want to waste the time we have left.’
‘Then don’t,’ I replied, turning to him. I looked into his sad eyes before kissing him. The kiss was soft, desperate, like both of us were searching for something.
I pulled away and leaned my forehead against his. And in that moment, none of the other stuff mattered.