1
Alex leant his head against the back seat of the car and closed his eyes. Man, he was tired of being cramped up in the car with his sister and her bad mood. He was seriously tempted to snap at her to stop moaning already, but his mother looked so tense that he sucked it up and kept quiet. The family had spent most of the day in the car driving to Marshall Bay from Cape Town, and although they had found the very smart house they were renting for the summer holidays and unpacked their things, now they were cruising slowly down the unfamiliar small town’s main road, looking for a restaurant that was open. He supposed that if Anna was as hungry as he was he could excuse some of her crabbiness.
“I don’t know why you had to choose such a backwater dump,” she said from the seat next to Alex. “If this place was any quieter it would be asleep. Like, in a coma.”
“Things get quiet on Sundays in small towns,” said Pam Palmer, and Alex knew that his mother was holding back her frustration in the interests of the general peace, just as he was. It was never worth it to confront Anna when she was in a mood like this. Alex liked the look of the town; it was different, kind of quaint and shabbier than the popular seaside towns they had been to in the past. But Anna did not agree. She had not wanted to come here at all and she wasn’t going to keep quiet about it.
“That’s just stupid.” Anna leant back against the leather seat, her arms folded, her brow creased with irritation and self-pity.
“Come on, Anna,” said Alex, as they drove past a group of teenagers hanging out on the low wall of a parking lot, eating ice creams. “It doesn’t look that bad.”
“Well, no, there is a golf course,” said Anna, sarcastically. “Dad would never have wanted to come here if there wasn’t. And it’s all right for you,” she said, turning to Alex, as her father slowed down in front of a place that looked interesting, only to find it was closed. “You’ll just spend hours surfing and find some girl to go gaga for you like you always do. I’m going to be stuck at the house reading magazines with Mom. There isn’t even a mall.”
“Anna,” said Mom, sounding tired and tense. “Try to be positive, please. We’re on holiday. In the morning we’ll drive around and find some interesting shops. There must be something more than … Ackermans.” Alex thought he saw her shudder as they drove past a branch of the budget clothing shop, complete with a lit-up plastic Christmas tree in the window.
“You can go to the beach,” said Alex, trying again to lift the mood. “And you won’t get bored in that house we’re staying in. There’s a gym, the pool, satellite TV …”
Anna snorted. “And not one of my friends,” she said. “I should never have come with you; I should have gone to Plett anyway. If we were in Plett I would be at a party right now. Not about to eat who knows what at Mike’s Chip Shack.”
Ed Palmer had parked the car and it did seem as if dinner tonight was going to be at a chip shack, whatever that was. Anna slammed the door as she got out. Alex thought she was acting as if she was nine instead of nineteen. He looked around at the street and breathed in the smell of the sea in the air, and out of habit, ran his hand through his dark hair. A pretty little waitress, her hair bleached blonde and her bottom lip pierced, came up to them and offered them a table. As they sat down in front of dog-eared cardboard placemats that doubled as menus, Mom dusting off the bench before she sat down, the waitress looked sideways at Alex and winked at him. He gave her a half-smile, not wanting to be too encouraging. She looked a bit old for him, and a little too edgy in her short skirt and heavy black boots. But it was a good sign. He didn’t think it was going to be a problem to find a girl to hang out with. Maybe more than one. He had promised to play golf with Dad the next day, but he wanted to go for a surf first, and hopefully afterwards as well. There might even be some hot lifeguards at the beach. He had hooked up with a lifeguard the summer before, in Plett. Almost two years older than him, and gorgeous. She had said she didn’t usually like younger guys but that he was pretty enough that she would make an exception. He hadn’t told the guys at school that, although he had shown them photos. They were seriously impressed; they said she looked like Selena Gomez.
They ate fish and chips served on mismatched plates, with limp lettuce and pink mayonnaise on the side. Anna asked how many times they reused the frying oil before they threw it out, but the waitress just raised an eyebrow and ignored her. Mom asked for a wine list; the waitress laughed and told her they had two kinds of wine – white and red. Dad ordered a beer, a Castle Lager, and Mom looked at him as if he had lost his mind. He shrugged, and said the place reminded him of his student days. There was a harassedlooking couple at the table next to them with a toddler who was crying loudly; Mom rubbed her temples and muttered something about small children in restaurants. Alex made a funny face at the kid, and she hid her face in her dad’s shoulder and peeped out again shyly. He made the face again and she smiled. He liked little kids; he hadn’t minded the crying.
Anna ate her food, drank a glass of wine and stopped complaining, at least out loud. She was still sulking when they got back to the house, burying herself in a pile of cushions on the couch with her phone. He didn’t get why she was being so negative. This place might be quiet, but he planned to be open to what it had to offer. He had no intention of wasting five weeks of summer holiday being bored.
He went to his bedroom and unpacked his bag, then picked up the remote from the table beside the huge bed and pressed a button. The curtains, which spanned an entire wall, opened to reveal an unbroken view of the beach and the sea, now eerily grey in the darkness. Not bad, he thought. And he had his own bathroom, all stainless steel and black tiles. He wandered downstairs to the huge living area, where Dad was already in front of the TV watching rugby highlights, and further down to where the lower level opened onto a garden, separated from the beach by a low fence. His new board was propped against the wall just inside the huge glass doors, ready for tomorrow. He knelt down and opened the zip of the cover, running his hand over the smooth fiberglass. He had wanted this board. All the crazy hard work last term had been worth it for this reward.
Straight A’s for this beauty. For Alex, it was a fair exchange.
He walked down the garden and out of the little gate onto the beach. It was dark, but the moon and stars were out and there was some light coming from the houses. He sat on the sand for a while, watching the sea and listening to the waves roar, and thought that to be sitting on the beach by himself, at night, was quite a grown-up, poetical kind of thing to do. Unlike his sister he didn’t miss his friends. He had friends, lots of them, but he didn’t feel as if life was a waste of time without them. He could make some new ones. And find a girl. Maybe small-town girls were different to the girls he knew at home in Cape Town. Maybe he could meet someone he could really talk to, someone interested in more than fashion and celebrities. He was seventeen, not a kid anymore, and unlike a lot of his friends he thought about the future, about how he wanted it to be. He thought about it a lot. He had begun to look differently at the girls he knew, trying to picture what it would feel like to really connect with someone, to meet someone who could somehow see past the superficial and really want to know him. He lay back on the sand and looked at the stars, thinking that he might be getting a bit too poetical now. It was unlikely that he was going to find a soul mate in this little place. This backwater dump, Anna had called it. He would settle for less for now, for someone he could take behind the dunes and kiss, someone to take home to that pool and huge TV for a private party. Yeah – just that would be enough. For now, at least.
2
The early morning air was cool on Jill’s bare arms and legs, and the gentle salty breeze lifted the wisps of red-blonde hair that had escaped her ponytail. Simon had slipped his small hand into hers as they walked along the familiar narrow path through the bush towards the beach. At nine he was probably a little old for such shows of affection, but she had been gone at school for eleven long weeks and they had missed each other. The gentle pressure of his fingers felt as much like home as the sand that kicked up between her feet and her beach slops.
He walked in front, leading her as they neared the beach. As they emerged from the path onto the tarred parking lot, he whooped and broke into a run, past the dingy toilet block and the smart new coffee and ice cream van, the old towel around his neck almost flying off, the green and yellow garden spade he carried clutched to his side. Jill laughed and held on to her bag as he pulled her onto the rocks at the edge of the tar, the rocks that looked down over the sand and the sea. They stood there together for a moment, and she drank in the familiar vista – the grassy patch and the lifesaving clubhouse to her right, the endless expanse of the water, the large boulders scattered over the sand, the piles of brown kelp. She took a deep, satisfied breath. For now, for five weeks at least, she was home.
“I thought this term would never end, Jill,” said Simon, as they made their way down the steps, and found their spot close by, against a cluster of smooth rocks. “I was getting so bored. I wish Aunt Bert would let me come to the beach on my own.”
Jill spread her towel and sat down, digging in her bag for the sunblock and Simon’s hat. “You know she can’t do that, Squirt,” she said, squeezing out a blob onto his hands. He rubbed his hands together and then over his pale, freckled face. “You’re not old enough yet. Didn’t you get to the beach at all while I was at school?”
“A few times,” he said, as he pulled on his hat and turned for Jill to put more sunblock on his back and shoulders. “James brought me twice. No – three times, I think. He let me use his bodyboard. It was so much fun.”
“I’m glad,” said Jill, pulling her peak cap out of her bag and putting it on, and rubbing sunblock onto her own arms and face. Even though it was early, she and Simon with their red hair and pale complexions had to be careful all the time or they would burn quickly in the harsh sun. “Well, now I’m home so I can take you more often. What are you going to do with the spade? Dig a hole or make a castle?”
“I’m going to make a dam,” said Simon, picking up the spade and going over to the trickle of water that ran down the sand towards the sea. “And then I think I’ll try to catch some waves.” He looked over at the gentle breakers.
“I’ll help you for a while,” said Jill. “How about over there?”
Simon dug and Jill knelt down, hauling sand with both hands and piling it where Simon wanted it. He was so happy and excited to have her home and to be on the beach, and it felt so good to be doing something that made him happy. If only Mum were here, she thought, the familiar pang of grief surfacing as it often did alongside her contentment. And if Mum were here, Dad would be too. But they weren’t. It was just her and Simon left now. It sucked that it had to be that way, but there was nothing she could do about it. Nothing except remember that you could miss your mother like crazy every day for the rest of your life, and you could be mad and hurt all the time that your dad had left you, and still be happy to be on the beach on a beautiful morning at the start of the summer holidays.
“It's looking good, Squirt,” she said, sitting back to admire what they had done. “You’ll be able to have a swim in here soon.”
Simon grinned and carried on digging. “You can go and read your book if you want,” he said. “I can do the rest.”
Jill got up and dusted the sand off her hands. “I think I will,” she said. She returned to her towel, stretching out her long legs in front of her and leaning back on the rock. The beach was still pretty empty except for a few retired people coming for their morning swim, and a few little kids running around with plastic buckets and spades. She took out her book and started to read, looking up every now and then to check on Simon. Once when she looked up she saw a boy from the church youth group in the distance. She recognised him at once even though he was far away. She put up her knees and tried to hide behind her book and her hat. She didn’t want him to see her. She had known him almost her whole life, and he had been a friend, she had thought, but the last time she had been home he had asked her out. When she had politely refused and explained that she was not interested in dating anyone at this point in her life, not even a guy as nice as he was, he had been hurt and upset. She had spent the rest of her time at home avoiding him, which had been difficult. Thankfully, he didn’t come close enough to recognise her, and she was relieved to see him walking away towards the next beach.
Jill felt tired of reading after a while and put her book down. Simon was still busy on his dam, and a few other curious kids had come to watch and help him dig. She leant back on her rock and looked out at the beach again, which was filling up now as the sun climbed higher. People trooped down the steps with their towels and bags, their cooler boxes and beach balls and gazebos. A family claimed a spot right next to her, and began setting up a beach tent, arguing good-naturedly as they put the poles together. A retired couple she recognised emerged from the sea, towelled themselves off and headed up the steps to go home. A small boy, a heavy nappy jiggling between his legs, ran in front of her, squealing with mirth as his father chased him. Two girls in bikinis, perhaps a little older than her, spread out towels a little way away. One of them sat crosslegged, took a big clip out of her beach bag and began coiling up her thick blonde hair on top of her head. She took out her phone, shielding the screen from the sunlight as she scrolled, then turned onto her stomach to read a magazine. The other girl, her coffeecoloured skin flawless and her long dark hair smooth and shiny, rested her head on her bag, a magazine against her bent thigh.
Jill was used to seeing girls like this at the beach during the holidays. And although she was a practical, humble girl and her own contentment and gratitude ran deep, she couldn’t help but compare herself to them. These girls weren’t sitting on old towels that their great aunts didn't want in the bathroom any more. They weren't wearing their black school swimming costumes and hand-me-down shorts. They didn't have reddish hair in a messy ponytail stuck through a cap, and weren’t taking care of a little brother who was digging up the beach with a garden spade. They were beautiful, independent and confident – or at least it seemed that way to her.
The feeling was not envy. Even at seventeen, she was mature enough to know that her happiness, and the peace and faith she had, were immensely valuable, and didn’t depend on what she looked like. She was, unusually for someone her age, happy to be herself. Yet she was still aware of an imbalance, a feeling that these girls were on a different plane of beautiful people somewhere above her.
Somewhere that she didn’t belong.
Jill picked up her book again, wondering to herself again why she was reading it. It was one of a fun series she had been reading through for some light entertainment during exams, about a boy called Percy Jackson, and was full of monster fights and corny jokes. But it made her laugh, and besides, she thought, glancing over at the magazines the beautiful bikini girls were reading, she didn’t think she would care much about the fashion tips and boy-catching advice in Glamour and Marie Claire.
Later, she was helping Simon towel off the worst of the sand caked on his legs when she happened to look past his shoulder at the sea and noticed someone walking out of the water, carrying a surfboard. He wasn’t wearing a wetsuit, just green shorts and rashguard, and he looked about her age. She did a bit of a double take and then laughed silently to herself. In her book, Percy had just popped out of the ocean after saving the world from a horde of evil sea monsters, and what she saw in front of her almost exactly matched the image in her imagination. She thought to herself that it would be really funny if, like Percy, he also had green eyes. As he walked up the sand he shook the water from his very dark hair and drew his fingers through it in a deft, practiced motion. Jill had spent a lot of her childhood on the beach, and she knew that most people were a little uncomfortable when they came out of the water. They were often self-conscious, eager to get to their towels to cover up or dry off. But this boy emerged from the sea as if he were calmly walking down a street. He looked like a rock star, never mind Percy Jackson. He was tanned and lean, and his hair fell forward in a perfect flick just like the guy in that boy band whose name she couldn’t quite remember, and instinctively she knew something: this boy belonged on that same, higher plane as the beautiful girls she had noticed earlier. The girls were still in the same spot, and she watched as he walked past them, acknowledging them with a subtle nod, a smile, a lifting of his eyebrows. He didn’t notice Jill at all, but then she didn’t expect him to. It’s a pity I can’t see his eyes, she thought, then picked up her bag and towel, reminded Simon to bring the spade and his slip slops, and started for the steps.