“I brought you a Coke,” she said.
“Thanks.”
The veranda was wide, with a low balcony, a swing chair and a table. Sabina set the glasses down then sat down herself. Alex joined her. The wooden frame of the swing chair creaked and they swung together, looking out at the view. For a long time neither of them said anything. Then, suddenly…
“Why don’t you tell me the truth?” Sabina asked.
“What d’you mean?”
“I was just thinking about Wimbledon. Why did you leave straight after the quarter finals? You were there one minute. Court Number One! And then-”
“I told you,” Alex cut in, feeling uncomfortable. “I wasn’t well.”
“That’s not what I heard. There was a rumour that you were involved in some sort of fight. And that’s another thing. I’ve noticed you in your swimming shorts. I’ve never seen anyone with so many cuts and bruises.”
“I’m bullied at school.”
“I don’t think so. I’ve got a friend who goes to Brookland. She says you’re never there. You keep disappearing. You were away twice last term and the day you got back, half the school burned down.”
Alex leaned forward and picked up his Coke, rolling the cold glass between his hands. An aeroplane was crossing the sky, tiny in the great darkness, its lights blinking on and off.
“All right, Sab,” he said. “I’m not really a schoolboy. I’m a spy, a teenage James Bond. I have to take time off from school to save the world. I’ve done it twice so far. The first time was here in Cornwall. The second time was in France. What else do you want to know?”
Sabina smiled. “All right, Alex. Ask a stupid question…” She drew her legs up, snuggling into the warmth of the towelling robe. “But there is something different about you. You’re like no boy I’ve ever met.”
“Kids?” Sabina’s mother was calling out from the kitchen. “Shouldn’t you be thinking about bed?”
It was ten o’clock. The two of them would be getting up at five to catch the surf.
“Five minutes!” Sabina called back.
“I’m counting.”
Sabina sighed. “Mothers!”
But Alex had never known his mother.
Twenty minutes later, getting into bed, he thought about Sabina Pleasure and her parents; her father a slightly bookish man with long grey hair and spectacles, her mother round and cheerful, more like Sabina herself. There were only the three of them. Maybe that was what made them so close. They lived in west London and rented this house for four weeks every summer.
He turned off the light and lay back in the darkness. His room, set high up in the roof of the house, had only one small window and he could see the moon, glowing white, as perfectly round as a one penny piece. From the moment he had arrived, they’d treated him as if they’d known him all his life. Every family has its own routine and Alex had been surprised how quickly he had fallen in with theirs, joining them on long walks along the cliffs, helping with the shopping and the cooking, or simply sharing the silence-reading and watching the sea.
Why couldn’t he have had a family like this? Alex felt an old, familiar sadness creep up on him.
His parents had died before he was even a few weeks old. The uncle who had brought him up and who had taught him so much had still been, in many ways, a stranger to him. He had no brothers or sisters. Sometimes he felt as isolated as the plane he had seen from the veranda, making its long journey across the night sky, unnoticed and alone.
Alex pulled the pillows up around his head, annoyed with himself. He had friends. He enjoyed his life. He’d managed to catch up with his work at school and he was having a great holiday. And with a bit of luck, with the Wimbledon business behind him, MI6 would leave him alone. So why was he letting himself slip into this mood?
The door opened. Somebody had come into his room. It was Sabina. She was leaning over him. He felt her hair fall against his cheek and smelled her faint perfume; flowers and white musk. Her lips brushed gently against his.
“You’re much cuter than James Bond,” she said.
And then she was gone. The door closed behind her.
Five-fifteen the next morning.
If this had been a schoolday, Alex wouldn’t have woken up for another two hours, and even then he would have dragged himself out of bed unwillingly. But this morning he had been awake in an instant. He had felt the energy and tension coursing through him. And walking down to Fistral Beach with the dawn light pink in the sky, he could feel it still. The sea was calling to him, daring him to come in. “Look at the waves!” Sabina said. “They’re big,” Alex muttered. “They’re huge. This is amazing!” It was true. Alex had been surfing twice before-once in Norfolk, once with his uncle in California -but he had never seen anything like this. There was no wind. The local radio station had warned of deep water squalls and an exceptionally high tide. Together these had produced waves that took his breath away. They were at least ten feet high, rolling slowly inland as if they carried the weight of the whole ocean on their shoulders. The crash as they broke was huge, terrifying. Alex could feel his heart pounding. He looked at the moving walls of water, the dark blue, the foaming white. Was he really going to ride one of these monsters on a flimsy board made of nothing more than a strip of fibreglass? Sabina had seen him hesitate. “What d’you think?” she asked.
“I don’t know…” Alex replied and realized he was shouting to make himself heard above the roar of the waves.
“The sea’s too strong!” Sabina was a good surfer. The morning before, Alex had watched her skilfully manoeuvring some nasty reefbreaks close to the shore. But now she looked uncertain. “Maybe we should go back to bed!” she yelled.
Alex took in the whole scene. There were another half-dozen surfers on the beach and, in the far distance, a man steadying a jet ski in the shallow water. He knew that he and Sabina would be the youngest people there. Like her, he was wearing a three millimetre neoprene wetsuit and boots which would protect him from the cold. So why was he shivering? Alex didn’t have his own board but had rented an Ocean Magic thruster. Sabina’s was a wider, thicker board, going for stability rather than speed, but Alex preferred the thruster for its grip and the feeling of control provided by its three fins. He was glad also that he had chosen an eight-foot-four. If he was going to catch waves as big as these, he was going to need the extra length. If…
Alex wasn’t sure he was going into the water. The waves looked about twice as tall as him and he knew that if he made a mistake he could all too easily get killed. Sabina’s parents had forbidden her to go in if the sea looked too rough and he had to admit, it had never looked rougher. He watched another wave come crashing down and might have turned back if he hadn’t heard one surfer calling to another, the words whipping across the empty sands.
“The Cribber!”
It couldn’t be true. The Cribber had come to Fistral Beach. Alex had heard the name many times. The Cribber had become a legend not just in Cornwall but throughout the surfing world. Its first recorded visit had been in September 1966, more than twenty feet high, the most powerful wave ever to hit the English coast. Since then there had been occasional sightings, but few had seen it and fewer still had managed to take the ride.
“The Cribber! The Cribber!” The other surfers were calling its name, whooping and shouting. He watched them dance across the sand, their boards over their heads. Suddenly he knew that he had to go into the water. He was too young. The waves were too big. But he would never forgive himself if he missed the chance.
“I’m going!” he shouted and ran forward, carrying his board in front of him, the tail connected to his ankle by a tough urethane leash. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sabina raise a hand in a gesture of good luck, but by then he had reached the edge of the sea and felt the cold water grip his ankles. He threw the board down and dived on top of it, the momentum carrying him forward. And then he was lying flat on his stomach, his legs stretched out behind him, his hands paddling furiously over the top of the board. This was the most exhausting part of the journey. Alex concentrated on his arms and shoulders, keeping the rest of his body still. He had a long way to go. He needed to conserve energy.
He heard a sound above the pounding of the sea and noticed the jet ski pulling away from the shore. That
