Chapter 27
MEGAN
The beach at Collioure is crowded with people as we near the start of the traditional water games.
It’s cloudy today but warm, the sun sneaking through when it can.
The atmosphere in the town is jubilant with street performers and upbeat music, and a fizz of excitement in the air that comes about when a community spills out into the streets to celebrate together.
This morning, I couldn’t wait to be a part of it, excited for a day of wandering the stalls for yummy food, watching the traditional dancers in the square and cheering on the locals bonkers enough to take part in the silliness of the water games.
Now, I’m wondering why the fuck I’d need to bring a swimsuit.
‘So,’ Nico begins, spinning round to face us as we near the crowds of the beach and clapping his hands, his expression a mixture of overzealous enthusiasm and panic in anticipation of our reaction, ‘you may have guessed it—’
‘Nico,’ I say in a warning voice.
‘—Henry always found the race of homemade rafts a fun competition that brought people together as a team—’
‘Oh god,’ Mum whispers, her hand flying to her mouth.
‘—and I believe he always liked the idea of taking part,’ Nico continues, his pitch growing higher and higher as he reads my expression. ‘So, today, he asks you to climb aboard a raft that I have helped to build with some friends and together we will paddle to victory!’
I stare at him, my mouth falling open.
He waits for one of us to say something, but eventually his eager smile falls and he sighs. ‘Please? It will be fun, I promise.’
Mum’s shoulders begin to shake with laughter.
‘I did not see this one coming, did you?’ she asks me, placing a hand over her heart.
‘Nico, tell me which team we are joining, and if you point at that group of handsome men wearing pirate hats and carrying paddles whilst towing what appears to be a large front door towards the sea—’
‘It’s the group of men wearing pirate hats,’ Nico confirms. ‘I’m not going to tell them you said they were handsome.’
She nods slowly. ‘Wonderful.’ She gives him a salute. ‘I’m in, Captain.’
‘You’re in?’ I say, turning to her in disbelief, panic rising in my chest at the loss of an ally. ‘Are you serious?’
‘We don’t have a choice, Megan, you know that. It’s your father’s request.’
‘We haven’t prepared for this! We haven’t .
. . you want us to go out to sea in that thing in front of all these people and we have no idea if it will float or sink!
’ I cry, gesturing to our so-called vessel which is sitting at the edge of the water, its creators posing for photos with their paddles lifted in the air like swords.
‘It’s hardly out to sea,’ Mum reasons, squinting at the post that we’re aiming towards. ‘If the plank sinks, we swim back in. Or wade, depending on how far we get.’
‘You’re being very calm about this,’ I say, irrationally annoyed that she’s not also irrationally annoyed. ‘We used to laugh at all the people who took part in this stupid race!’
‘We laughed with them,’ she corrects. ‘Everyone is here to have a good time and not take anything seriously. I’ve always admired the people who give it a go. Obviously, your father did, too. Now we get to be a part of it without having had to do any of the work.’
‘Rowing is tough work, Mum.’
‘I think our team looks well able,’ she says, practically drooling as some of Nico’s friends peel off their T-shirts, ready to run in with their boat in board shorts.
‘Bloody hell, Mum, you have a one-track mind.’
She huffs, turning to face me with her hands on her hips. ‘Megan, I think this will be good for you. Do you know why?’
‘Please don’t say something about conquering my fear of being in front of an audience. Or anything to do with setting me up with one of those guys. Or anything about me being an uptight person who needs to let go.’
The corners of her mouth twitch upwards. ‘I was actually going to say that I think this task will be good for you because you are really good at these sorts of things.’
I point my finger towards the makeshift boats and their deluded crews. ‘You think I’m good at this? Oh, great, good to know my talents aren’t anything too niche.’
‘No need for that cutting sarcasm of yours, my darling, I meant that you’re fearless and you’re practical,’ she explains, giving me the kind of look that tells me she’s right and don’t even try to deny it.
‘You got in a hot air balloon the other day! And you told me yourself when we were camping that you were tough.’
I glance at Nico and quickly mutter, ‘I didn’t say that out of nowhere, by the way, I wasn’t, like, boasting about being tough. There was context around it, I was trying to say to Mum that—’
‘You were always first to jump in the water on the night cruises, even though you were scared of jellyfish,’ Mum cuts in and I stop rambling. ‘You beat everyone when it came to any water sports we did, isn’t that right, Nico?’
‘Yes,’ he nods, ‘except I beat you a few times when we were racing kayaks.’
I frown at him. ‘I don’t remember that.’
‘It happened all the time.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You can debate the details later,’ Mum interjects, grabbing my shoulders as Nico and I stare each other down.
‘The point is you were brilliant in the water. And not just the water. Look at you up on that horse after years of not going near one. Please don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re not outgoing or you’re too much of a city girl these days to grab a paddle and pull your weight.
I think with your help we might have a chance of winning this race, so long as the plank works. ’
‘It’s not a plank, it’s a boat,’ Nico tries to convince us. ‘And it works.’
‘There you go, you have a boat, you have a willing crew.’ She gestures at the four others in our team, who are now waving us over with their stupid feather-plume hats.
Turning back to me, she softens her voice to say, ‘Your dad never had the guts to do it while he was alive. What do you say we make him proud by giving it our best shot?’
Both her and Nico are watching me expectantly.
I close my eyes momentarily in despair and then open them begrudgingly.
‘You should consider writing and selling pep talks as a side hustle,’ I mutter.
‘Does that mean my pep talk worked?’ Mum checks, her and Nico sharing a hopeful look. ‘Are you in?’
‘Depressingly, yes,’ I say, prompting Nico to whoop and give Mum a high-five.
‘Come on, it starts soon,’ Nico tells us, turning on his heel and rushing down to where the rest of the team are waiting, kicking off his shoes near the boat.
Mum wraps an arm around my shoulders and leads me towards our destiny.
‘I’m nervous but excited,’ she says, waving at the crowd who have no idea who she is or notice her waving at them. ‘Imagine if we win! I hope I don’t let the team down.’
‘No time for introductions, but Dawn, Megan, these are for you,’ Nico says, handing us a paddle each as we take off our shoes.
‘You have to climb aboard only once you’re in the water.
When the horn goes, we pull the boat in and once we’re all on, we paddle towards that post out there, go around it and back in. Whoever gets back first wins.’
‘Wait, one last addition to the boat,’ Mum trills, pulling the box of ashes from her bag and placing it carefully in the middle. ‘That cannot go in the water, all right boys? That’s Megan’s father in there.’
They look confused.
‘Mum, you have got to stop saying stuff like that, it creeps people out,’ I groan, keeping my loose white shirt on over my bikini but taking off my skirt and rolling it up to put away in my bag.
‘Aren’t you going to bring Henry with you, too?’ Mum wants to know.
‘I don’t think—’
‘It’s the reason we’re here. He wanted to do it, too. We’re a team.’
Lifting my eyes to the sky, I exhale. ‘Fine. This is so weird.’ Pulling out the box of ashes, I place it in the middle of the raft next to Mum’s box, glancing at my other crewmates apologetically. ‘That also needs to stay out of the water if possible. Thanks.’
‘Okay, take your places,’ Nico bellows, as I look nervously down the line at the other idiots taking part in this thing, every raft as ridiculous as the next.
One guy is carrying what looks like a large cardboard box on pink pool noodles.
The horn blares, and my heart leaps with nerves as I dash into the water after the others, Mum next to me.
The cold water hits my legs and I gasp as we wade further in before clambering up with the others onto our boat, paddle in hand, finding my balance in a kneeling position and then helping Nico with hauling Mum up onto the raft next to me.
‘Allez! Allez!’ Our crew shout in a disjointed chorus as we all begin frantically paddling.
With the crowds on the beach cheering behind us, I experience a rush of adrenaline as my heart races.
I feel jittery, paddling with all my might, suddenly determined to win this ludicrous event as though it’s important.
When I hear Mum go, ‘Isn’t this hilarious!
Ooh, that girl hasn’t even managed to start yet’, I find myself yelling, ‘Focus, Mum!’, the competitive streak in me flaring.
I’m pleased to see that she gets back to paddling quickly.
We manage to overtake the leading raft just before turning round the post and, with the end in sight, we find a fresh wave of motivation.
Oh my god, I love this, I think as my arms ache with the effort of continually cutting the paddle through the water.
It’s not like I don’t exercise, I take pride in keeping in good shape with cardio and yoga.
But there’s something about being a part of a team, the feeling of camaraderie that’s being created here on this wobbly but ultimately sturdy raft without me even knowing the names of the others yet.
I smile at Mum’s shriek when she’s struck by a particularly big splashback from Nico’s paddle ahead of hers and yet again feel glad that she’s here, too, even though she’s rubbish at this.
She’s barely paddling and maybe does one paddle for every four the rest of us do.
It’s like she’s doing it in slow motion.
But still, she’s here, living it at the same time. We’ll be able to talk about it.
People on the beach are up on their feet, their whoops and cheers roaring in my ears as the water from the paddles splashes against my legs.
When we cross the finish line in first place, I can’t stop laughing.
Mum is squealing next to me, ‘We did it! We did it!’, and the lads are already jumping off into the water in celebration.
Nico, still on the raft, has swivelled round to look at me, his skin dewy from splashes, his wide smile dazzling, his eyes gleaming with excitement, his T-shirt plastered to his toned muscles from the water.
Fuck, he looks good.
And the whole time I’m laughing, clutching my stomach, wiping the tears from my eyes.
Mum grabs the two boxes of ashes as Nico slides off the raft and then helps her down into the knee-deep water, and she carries them safely to shore, holding them aloft and bellowing Queen’s ‘We Are the Champions’ at the top of her lungs mildly off-key but with admirable enthusiasm, which, to everyone on the beach who have zero context of our story, must look particularly barmy.
But to be honest, that’s how it should be, because she is barmy.
And she’s right. We are the champions, thanks to Dad.
As I hop off the raft into the water, I look up to find Nico has waded around to my side.
Beaming at me and crying, ‘We won!’, he grabs me round the waist and effortlessly lifts me up and my legs instinctively wrap around his hips and my ankles link at his back as I squeal with laughter, nuzzling my face into his neck.
When I raise my head, he reveals no intention of putting me back down yet, his arms holding me up around him securely, our smiles inches from each other, my hands now cupping his jaw.
The beach fades away into a blur as I watch his eyes flicker down to my lips before he swallows, his expression suddenly serious.
My breath catches and my thumb brushes along his cheekbone, and it’s as though I finally have permission to study him up close, my eyes drinking in every detail of his face, his bold dark eyebrows, the creases around his eyes, the grating stubble under my thumb, the gentle slope of his nose, his full lips.
I think he knows what I’m doing but he doesn’t seem bothered by my gaze.
He exhales softly as though relieved by it.
And then one of his friends slaps him on the back enthusiastically and the sudden jolt snaps us back to the moment at hand.
He lowers me back into the water and hugs his mate, who then comes over to high-five me.
My face flushes at our spontaneous public display, but no one seems to have noticed or cared or maybe they’re not surprised.
The people on the beach are still cheering as someone through a speakerphone, I think, declares us the winners in rapid French and there’s a fresh eruption of applause and cheers.
I’m swarmed by the other teammates, hugging them even though I don’t know them but we are now forever bonded by this momentous achievement.
Mum is still holding up Dad’s ashes, singing ‘We Are the Champions’, and I spend the rest of the day with my jaw hurting from smiling so much while every inch of me physically aches to be up in Nico’s arms once again.