Page 70 of One Summer

‘I’m not going to “meet it”,’ he says, still smiling. ‘But I might be going to make friends.’

Which is how we end up thigh-deep in sun-warmed water, side by side, trying to sneak up on and befriend a flatfish.

It’s all going well until he trips. He doesn’t trip on a slippery rock. He somehow manages to trip on his own toes. He lands on his hands and knees with an enormous splash, gasping from the shock of the water hitting him full in the face.

‘Wow,’ he says. ‘How strong is my nan’s weed?’

‘Pretty strong, I reckon.’

He leans back into the water and wets his hair.

‘You comfy down there?’ I say, watching his sweatshirt and shorts bubbling up around him from pockets of trapped air.

‘Not really,’ he says. ‘Care to join?’

He raises his hand and I take a hasty step backwards.

‘Do not even think about pulling me in there.’

‘I would never try to pull you,’ he says, and I blink.

Is he flirting with me?

‘In,’ he adds, categorically. ‘I would never try to pull you in.’

Fifty-Nine

Swoop

Before Caleb can even begin to dry out, he unwinds the kite string and pitches our fake eagle into the air. It catches flight straight away and I watch him mess around with it, sending it swooping to the ground, then into the air again. After a few moments, he brings it to me to try, holding it out proudly.

I’ve never been able to get a kite to fly, but Betty was right – this kite soars effortlessly and I lose myself for a few minutes in pure, unadulterated joy.

Caleb shouts and then motions to something else in the air, and I see that we’ve attracted a very fierce kestrel mother, who swoops on our fake eagle even though it is approximately fifty times larger than her. At some point, the bird seems to realise our kite is not a threat, because she returns to the cliffside, where presumably she has a nest.

Caleb names the female kestrel Kendra. The male kestrel with greyer markings, who keeps his distance, he decides to call Ken.

Part of me finds it sweet that the stoned version of Caleb has immediately started naming the wildlife. The other part of me is affronted.

‘Why does Kendra have to be named after her boyfriend?’ I say, bristling. ‘Why can’t she have her own name?’

‘He’s named after her,’ Caleb says, smiling. ‘He’s taken her name. The diminutive form.’

*

The kite flies itself: I’m walking along the beach, holding the string in one hand, without having to adjust it or even look at it, when I notice Caleb stoop to pick something up.

Look at him, I think, beachcombing. After all the nagging he directed at me.

It turns out to be an old piece of pottery. He passes it to me with the words, ‘For you, milady.’

I wonder why he’s making a point of this emphasis and then I look at the shard. It’s snowy white but there are three letters on it in grey transfer print, which I know because of Max’s enthusiasms. The letters are EWE.

He lets out a tiny little lamb bleat, which apparently, I find completely hilarious.

Eventually, when I’ve calmed myself out of the giggles and just have hiccups, he turns serious again.

‘From jewellery?’ he says. ‘Maybe an old lid to a China box?’

---