‘And you! Thank you for coming.’ I smiled as he kissed both my cheeks, and I did the same back.
‘Of course. It is your first competition,’ Felix said.
‘It means a lot that you’re here,’ I said, looking into the brown eyes that I’d come to know so well.
‘I will not go too close to the water, but it is a big deal for you,’ he said, his hand in his hair.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Seriously.’
Felix pulled his phone from his pocket and looked at the screen. I watched his face as he raised an eyebrow at it. Then he put it away and looked at me.
‘He did not believe me when I told him,’ Felix said.
‘What? Who?’ I looked around, wondering if he was talking about someone on the beach.
‘Antoine,’ he replied.
And there it was. The butterfly explosion.
‘He didn’t believe what?’ I asked.
‘That you were staying here … He’s on his way back from the coast.’
And it was a thousand things all at once. It was the fact that I’d be surfing in front of Antoine, making the pressure increase by about one thousand per cent. It was the fact that Felix was messaging him, like a brother. It was the fact that there wasn’t any jealousy, no acknowledgement of a situationthat could be awkward and complicated. There was none of that. He looked happy. Or maybe just happy for me. It said a million things about our friendship that I could never put into words.
‘OK, Margot,viens ici!’ Sébastian called me over and I walked towards him and Lili, with Felix beside me.
‘Delphine has gone for a little run. Maybe you should go too? Do you know how it works?’ Sébastian asked. He was serious this time. He stood up and put his arm round my shoulder. ‘I will show you.’
Sébastian led me around the beach. He pointed to the judge’s platform. ‘Here is where the judges sit. They mark you out of ten for each wave. Only the two highest waves count towards the total.’
I listened intently to everything Sébastian had to say. We probably looked related as we strolled along the beach, with our blonde hair almost the same shade, his longer than mine and a lot less curly.
My chest swelled, taking in all the faith he had in me as he explained the competition in detail. How there would be four rounds, and in each heat the best two surfers would progress to the next round. In the final, the top four competitors would all qualify forLa Vague d’Or.
‘And Antoine will be here?’ Sébastian asked, jolting me out of competition mode.
‘I think Felix said he was coming, yeah.’ I tried to make it sound casual, even though every time someone said his name my whole body tingled.
‘You have been like a lucky charm for the Laurents,’ saidSébastian. And I felt a surge of gratitude for him, for putting into words something I didn’t even know I needed to hear. ‘A lucky charm’ – like me being here, in France with the boys, truly mattered. That maybe I’d changed something, not just for me, but for them too.
But I needed to concentrate. So I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out the shell that Rue had given me.
‘This ismylucky charm,’ I said, showing him.
He took it from my hand and kissed it. ‘And now it is more lucky. We should get you your vest.’
Sébastian and I queued up at the officials’ table and he spoke to them in French, before one of them handed me a black rash vest with ‘Biarritz 2026’ on it in bright white print. I held it up in front of me and stared at it as we walked back to Felix and Lili.
The sun had risen now, and the heat was already warming my skin.
I got changed behind a screen, removing my shorts and taking the shell out and squeezing it in my hand before putting it away carefully. I put on my vest with pride, smoothing it down over my skin and inhaling deeply as I stepped back out into the sun.
I walked over to the hut and had to take a moment to myself as images of the last time I was inside raced through my head like an X-rated movie. I shook the thoughts away and hoped that nobody had noticed the flush of heat in my cheeks.
It felt different here without Antoine. I wanted to tell people to step away, to stop leaning on the walls and looking in the windows, that this belonged to Antoine. But instead, Ipicked up some wax and held it in my fingers, remembering the day Antoine showed me what to do, how he leaned over my shoulder, his hand on mine, his breath in my ear, hairs standing up on the back of my neck.
I waxed my board then carried it back to Sébastian and Lili. Felix and Delphine were there too.
