‘What do you know,’ Max said, giving him a naked stare.

‘You’re lucky I didn’t bin them at a service station.’

They stuck to the highways now, no detours.

Checking the chart again, Damien said, ‘I bet the water will be freezing.’

‘It’s already freezing,’ Max complained. ‘Why do you think I didn’t want to come here in October?’

‘What?’

‘No, actually. I admit it! I wanted to come while it was still warm. Is that so terrible, Damien? Do we have to act like martyrs?’

‘The trip is about the waves.’

Damien had pushed for them to come a couple of weeks later, in October rather than September, to be sure of getting the autumn swell. But Max, pleading work, insisted on the September dates.

‘I didn’t think it would make a difference.’

‘So the research, the contract?’

Silence. He could not believe it. ‘You mean you made that up because you wanted it to be warm.’

He was the worst. The actual worst. They passed more time in silence while Damien simmered. Do we have to act like martyrs? He pondered the question. If acting like martyrs meant dealing with cold water, then yes, the answer was yes. He took this as a given. At the same time, Damien got that he could be severe at times. This severity was a quality he cultivated in himself. He lived a stripped-back existence, a life of withholding and denial. Of desolate extremes, desert and ocean. And why? To what end?

He knew the answer, of course. It was always the same, the one all-encompassing pursuit that gave his life its shape. Could you revise the list of things you lived for? He didn’t think it was possible. What if there was only one thing on the list?

All the while they were driving east, tracking along the coast. As they neared the Basque coast, their destination, Max looked increasingly rattled. He was nervous about the surf. More than nervous. He was afraid. He’s right to be, Damien thought. Only fools do not fear the ocean.

‘If you’re not feeling it, you know you don’t have to go out.’

‘If you’re talking about Saturday, that was because of the undercurrent. That thing was fucking lethal.’ Max tried to buzz his window down, but it went so far and then stuck.

‘The worst thing is to panic.’

‘I know that.’ His eyes glittered, each one a miniature abyss. His anger hadn’t dissipated; he had sharpened it to a point. It was audible in his voice, visible in his bearing: he carried the shock of having faced his own mortality and weakness. Raising his voice over the wind, he said, ‘I’m not like you, Damien. I’m not obsessed with surfing. There are other things in my life. It’s the most useless thing in the world to try to be good at!’

‘There are other things in my life.’