Page 34 of A Loser by Christmas
“He said England was better.”
“Because?”
“So I’d have the last of my family close by, I guess.Him.The school wasn’t too far from the boatyard. I came home on the weekends if he wasn’t travelling. I could learn the ropes of the business right there with him.”
“So that’s what you did? You let him teach you?”
“No. I fucked off back to France as soon as I hit eighteen andla Sylviewas legally mine, but... ” I clear my throat. “But ten years after leaving, I didn’t fit in there either.”
Like the small boats I’ve spent every year since tracking, I’d been caught between two nations, not belonging to either. Now I move on in a hurry to get away from this feeling of drifting with no destination.
Calum is slower to follow me to the far side of the room where a flatscreen TV shows a loop of contest footage. There’s no sound, only action, which loops back to the beginning, and Calum shouts, “That was Reece!” He does hurry then to read a scrolling info banner over my shoulder. “Wait. It says you already made the top three in the contest. You’re a finalist?”
The TV screen darkens to reflect the same mix of expressions I’ve seen him wear at so many ice rinks.
Pride.
Delight.
Excitement at progress.
No wonder kids keep getting up for him after falling over. Having the same aimed at me is a lot. He sounds less sure of his own contribution. “You really think splicing me next to Reece will?—”
He’s silenced by what next floods across the TV’s flat screen.
Blackness rises to swamp his brother, a death sentence in the making for anyone in the water. The sky behind Reece isan ugly purple. Lightning forks to show a Trelawney fighting against that deadly outcome. Not in the same way that Calum fights other players to score multimillions. His older brother battles what happens after blood money changes hands on the same sandy beaches where D-Day landings once got Europe’s liberation started.
Reece wages a different kind of war on wind and water. We both watch him scream a desperatefuck youat traffickers while a storm slams his boat against rocks. This rescue attempt looks hopeless from every camera angle, and I’d rigged plenty.
“Shit.” Calum spots the reason for his brother’s desperation. “There’s someone in the water. Ah, fuck, it’s a kid.” Calum must lip-read what his brother shouts next the same way I did on the night a storm blew his words away. Like me, he has no problem translating.
“Help me, Valentin.”
Calum breathes that along with me, and on the screen, my camera work gets chaotic.
The next view is of the wheel. Of my hands clamped to it, bone white. And of Reece spotlit by even brighter lightning. He steps over the gunwale, arms lifted to dive into churning water, and Calum’s breath catches again. I feel it the second his chest slams into my back and his arms wrap tight around me.
“No!”
His warning echoes too late in a central London gallery, like mine once did between England and France. Today, I watch a silent replay of Reece’s final voiceless shout my way.
“Hold fast.”
I’d fought more than a storm to do that. Fought more than waves to hold course for him after he hurled himself in roiling water. And I’d fought off more than those rocks to haul Reece back aboard with a little girl as limp as seaweed.
“Couldn’t raise my arms for a week afterwards. Never been so scared. Never wished more that I was stronger.” My chest aches too even though I know the outcome of this rescue. I still hold my breath until we both see movement.
“She made it.” Calum huffs a hot breath against the back of my neck. It gusts the same way I’ve seen in hockey highlights after his on-ice battles. “And Reece. I thought... I thought he...”
I turn in his arms to see a close-up of the same relief I remember feeling. And similar dampness.
Calum swipes at his eyes.
Shakes his head, like he thinks I’ll laugh at the fact they glisten.
“Of course he made it. I just spoke to him last night.” He blinks fast, still choked by his brother’s heroism, but it isn’t Reece he mentions. “You saved him. Saved both of them.”
“Non.”
