Thirty
IT WAS A fine day to be on the sea. Summertime in England and the sky was wide and cornflower-blue, golden sunshine twinkling on the water, and on the shore the small Cornish town of Lustell Cove sat pretty as a drawing.
Olivia Lark sensed the wave at her back and began to paddle, working her arms as the rush gathered pace and she braced herself for the leap. On a surge she lifted on to the board, the motion of the swell carrying her for an electrifying instant before her footing slipped out from beneath her and she toppled into the water. For seconds she was submerged in a whoosh of salty-fresh silence before surfacing, half gasping, half laughing, into the day, and feeling, as she always did, on the receiving end of a cosmic punchline. Despite a mouthful of chalky Atlantic and the noose of seaweed wrapped around her ankle, out on the water she felt happiest of all.
She splashed into land, the board tucked under one arm and the other lifted to squeeze the briny dregs from her chestnut hair. On the beach, bronzed bodies basked in the heat on pink towels, a rainbow of parasols fluttered lazily in the breeze and chased an arc around the horseshoe inlet. Holiday makers licked strawberry ice cream and patted castles out of gritty, grainy buckets, while on the water black shapes paddled, bobbing on the sway, counting to the ultimate wave.
Swiftly she showered and dressed, tying her hair in a loose, damp ponytail, and made her way across the sand. She couldn’t put it off for ever.
The Blue Paradise surf shack was a timber cabin bordered by cut-out palms. Out front a heap of kayaks were knotted together, haphazard driftwood stumbling a path to the entrance. She almost collided with a group of girls on their way out.
‘Oops,’ she backed up to let them pass, ‘sorry!’
Slinky as panthers in their wetsuits, tossing manes and tinkling laughter, the girls were like glossy creatures from another planet. Olivia couldn’t help wondering if, in her younger years, she had enjoyed access to mascara, a hairdryer, a wardrobe—words that through her teens had taken on the exotic overtones of a far-flung spice market—she might have earned access to that kind of magazine-friendly femininity. As it was there seemed to be an awful lot of effort that went into it (seldom was the day she staggered into the morning with so much as a perfunctory glance in the mirror), time that could be better spent doing other things, like sticking your head out of a car window, or running at cows through a mud sludge, or daydreaming about the guy you fancied, or having a lie-in, or painting a picture, or making lists about all the things you really ought to spend your time doing, which wasn’t any of the above.
Even as a child, playing Teatime at Tiffany’s (horrid little conferences she had endured as a six-year-old; Tiffany Price pouring air out of the spout and asking if anyone took milk, which had troubled Olivia’s young mind deeply because how could there be milk if there were no actual tea?) had never held the same allure as whatever adventure the boys were having—building dens, firing catapults, hunting the beach for gold. She had scrambled into their fold by way of initiation: Oli who could climb a tree quick as a monkey, who picked up spiders in her bare hands, who drew her own comic books with a blunt pencil and who always had grass stains on her knees.
Taking a breath, she stepped inside.
‘Hey, Addy.’
She propped her board by the door. The shop was gleaming with drowsy afternoon glow, its shelves stacked with reef gear, trunks and bikinis, racks and wax. On the wall hung an impressive model of a Great White, tail whipping and teeth bared.
Addy Gold was in his usual position at the counter, thumbing through his phone with his top off, a string of beads at his neck and wrists. Illuminated in a shaft of sunlight, his six-pack glistening above the peeled-down skin of his wetsuit, Olivia half expected a burst of choral music to accompany the sight.
‘Hey,’ he mumbled, glancing up from important business to give her a fleeting, if somewhat confused, smile. ‘Back already?’
‘It’s been a year.’
‘Has it?’
His indifference stung. ‘Yeah, well, London didn’t work out.’
That was the understatement of the century. It was hard to believe she was back at Lustell Cove, her childhood home: scene of angst-ridden school years at Taverick Manor, endless lazy Saturdays paddling the water and stolen kisses after dark with Theo Randall from the tennis club, who had always smelled faintly of Aertex. At twenty-two Olivia had graduated from a local art course, London had seemed like the next logical step and so she’d headed to the city to Become A Painter (how ridiculous that sounded!), envisaging days spent floating about museums discussing abstract expressionism and sipping free wine. Instead she’d spent the next year trading an Aix-en-Provence atelier for an Archway bedsit, and camping with a tortured writer who never bought loo roll and who was in possession of so much body hair it was like showering after a gorilla. Wading ankle-deep through unsold drawings had soon become depressing and, following a series of short-lived bar jobs, the last of which had culminated in Olivia telling an aggressively sexist customer to fuck off, her bank account had finally run dry and she’d been forced to admit defeat.
‘No kidding,’ he droned.
She smiled brightly. ‘So did I miss much?’
‘Nah.’ Addy yawned, stretching so his chest opened before her like a casket of treasure. ‘The cove’s dead. Nothing exciting ever happens round here.’
‘It will now I’m back. I can’t spend the entire summer sitting under my mother’s caravan roof, you know.’ If it could be called that: parts of Florence Lark’s ancient Pemberton Static were tacked down with masking tape.
‘Guess you’ll be looking for a job?’
‘It’s why I’m here.’ She consulted the noticeboard. ‘Anything good come up?’
‘Dunno—haven’t checked it in ages.’
Every opening at the cove advertised at the Blue Paradise and the display was thick with flyers requesting bar staff, shop help, grape pickers at the Quillets Vineyard or muck shovellers at the Barley Nook stables … The list went on. Olivia had taken most as holiday earners when she was still in training bras.