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 donowwas 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 hadsexwith 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 Imoved 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 themand 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, ofcourseI understood the panic. And I think that’s what hurt the most, that he couldn’t trust me to understand.
