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.
16
I’d woken at five a.m. the next morning, ready for my lesson with Antoine. Just so I wasn’t ‘late’. And today, we’d gone into the water. I’d been so excited about the fact I’d stood up on my first go (and every time after) that I told Antoine I’d see him at my sister’s lesson.
It wasn’t until I got back to the caravan, exhausted and happy, that I realized. I had my date with Felix in Saint-Jean-de-Luz.
‘Margot, Margot! Did you go into the water today?’ Rue asked as soon as she spotted me. She was sitting at the table outside, eating breakfast in her pyjamas.
I nodded. ‘I did. And I stood up. First time.’ I held up a finger.
‘Awesome. Do you think I could stand up?’ Rue asked.
‘You’ll have to do what Antoine tells you. And it might be that you stay lying down for a few more days, but he’ll show you what’s safe,’ I said.
‘But you could just ask him?’ She didn’t miss a beat.
I took a deep breath and looked at Mum and Dad. ‘Mum, Dad, would you mind being there for their surf lesson today? I made plans with Felix and I completely forgot. Sorry.’
‘You’re not coming?’ Rue shouted before Mum and Dad could answer.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t. Not today.’
‘That’s fine, love,’ Mum said. ‘It’s your holiday too, you should enjoy yourself. Where are you going?’ Mum and Dad seemed to have chilled out here. And I don’t know if Mum had spoken to Dad, but even he had been giving me a break. A serious contrast to the way we got on at home.
‘Saint-Jean-de-Luz,’ I said.
‘With yourboyfriend,’ said Rue, who was in a major mood now.
