Kook. Chris Vick

      I WENT AND TALKED to Grandma. About Jade, about surfing. I needed to talk to someone. I couldn’t talk to Mum. Not about the danger, leastways.

      We had tea and cake in her conservatory, looking out to sea.

      “Are you sweet on this girl?” she said. Her hand trembled as she lifted her cup to drink. She looked tired.

      “Yeah, I am. I like the surfing too… It’s just… I got in a bit of trouble. Almost drowned.” I blurted it out. I looked for a reaction, but she was still and calm. She let out a long sigh, and put her tea down.

      “Why did you tell me that?” she said. I shrugged. “Are you waiting for me to tell you to be careful? Are you waiting for me to say that’s how your father died? That you should stop?”

      “I… I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t talk to Mum. She thinks it’s a fad that I’ll give up. But it’s not a fad, and it’s…”

      “Dangerous.”

      “Yeah. Yes. What would Dad have said?”

      She looked out, at the sea.

      “He loved the ocean. It had a pull on him like nothing else. Right up to the day he died. I think that angered your mother. She was jealous of it… And if he were here now?” She paused. “He’d understand. He’d want you to love the sea like he did, but he’d want you to be careful too… Sorry, Sam, but you’re old enough to make up your own mind.”

      I thought about my dead, drowned dad. Again, I tried to find memories. But they were vague. Distant.

      “Grandma, is it all right if I go and check out his stuff?”

      “Of course,” she said, and I made my way upstairs.

      The room was the same as before, a mess of boxes and piles of equipment. I yanked the curtains back, letting the sun in.

      I didn’t know where to start. I flicked through books full of numbers and graphs. Stuff I couldn’t understand, even though I was good at maths. The equipment was beyond me too.

      There was one chest, already open. Inside were papers and charts, messed up like someone had rummaged around in it.

      At the bottom of the chest there was a neatly folded piece of paper. I took it out and flattened it on the floor. It was a sea chart. The land part was one big brown blank, but the sea part was full of detail. There were lines and dots and numbers, and on the bottom edge of the chart were scribbled notes. I guessed it was my dad’s handwriting. It looked a lot like mine. That spooked me too, just like the smell of the place had.

      The writing was above a couple of small dots – tiny, but the same colour as the land, so they had to be little islands. They had lots of rings around them, showing the layout of the seabed.

      He’d written:

       Trench ends here. 930 isobar. 60mph wind, 90mph gusts.

      Then he’d put in a bunch of x’s, dotted round the island, and some writing by each of them:

       X The Excalibur

       PN

       X The Hope

       BZ

       X Star Cross

       DH

      Something in it struck me. It was like the memories of Dad, with the blue paint, and him holding me in the shore break. Something in it made sense. But I didn’t know what.

      I took it downstairs and showed it to Grandma.

      “I found this. It’s got his writing on it,” I said. She looked at it, carefully.

      “I’m sorry, Sam, I don’t know what this is. But take it if you want.”

      *

      I was going surfing with Jade and the others on the Saturday. I went over to Jade’s on the Friday night and we hung out in the den. She offered me vodka, like Grandma offered me tea.

      “Sorry there’s no spliff,” she said. “Big G’s giving me some of his tomorrow.”

      “That’s okay,” I said. I said yes to the drink though.

      “I nick it from Dad,” she explained. “A bit here or there. He doesn’t know.”

      We couldn’t really sit on the makeshift bed without it being awkward, so we squatted on the floor, on cushions, facing each other.

      We talked about me, surfing. She wanted to know everything: from getting the board off Rag, right to when I’d washed up at her feet. The wind, the waves, what it felt like, how I rode waves, what was difficult, what I found easy. Everything. She seemed impressed, grinning and nodding all the time I was talking.

      “Sounds like you done well for a beginner. Sounds like you got hooked too. That’s why you were grinning, that time at the bus stop. You’d been surfing.”

      “Did you know then?”

      “No, soon after. I figured you’d tell me when you were ready. I also figured you were going out in small conditions. The other day though… shit. I didn’t know you’d been out in serious stuff. Respect. You’ve got some nuts.”

      “WelI, yeah. But I didn’t really know what I was getting into. The forecast said three feet. I didn’t know about wave period then. Didn’t know what it does or why. Concave refraction, and all that?” I checked her eyes for some recognition. “You know about that, right?”