Chapter Thirteen

The grass is still damp from this morning’s dew under my bare feet. A month ago it was crunchy with frost, and in another month or two it will be dry and brown from the heat of high summer. That thought is immediately followed by another: Will I still be alive to see it?

I hate that it is becoming my norm. To question how many seasons I still have. How many days, how many hours and minutes. Sometimes, when I am alone, I can hear seconds tick by in my head. Loud and relentless, a reminder that time stops for no one.

Under the trees the air is damp and humid, but it’s a short walk of twenty meters and then I am clear, perched on the top of a small dune only a meter high. Spread out before me, in all its breathtaking beauty, is the beach.

I close my eyes and breathe in a deep breath of salty air and when I exhale it back out a giddy little laugh escapes with it. The scent is delicious. It smells of my childhood and hot days punctuated with sweaty adventure, of teenage kisses with spotty boys in the tussock grasses of the sand dunes. Of flip-flops carelessly stolen by the tide, driftwood statues, sandcastles, and jellyfish stings. Floating idly on my back in the clear water like a starfish, before gleefully riding the breakers to shore on a body board gifted by Santa. Picking through rock pools with a plastic bucket clenched in hand. My mother’s voice, warm ham sandwiches, and lime cordial, sand in my hair and zinc on my nose.

Memories, thick and fast, like a slideshow. Both painful and joyful. I have lived a life. I have lost a life. It was never mine to begin with. On loan, temporary, subject to recall.

I jump down onto the sand and walk down toward the water. The ocean is calm today, a kind of moody turquoise color like one of those three-dollar rings from gypsy fairs that change color depending on whether you’re happy or sad. Supposedly. Kate, a believer in science rather than the occult, said it was more to do with the temperature of your skin. I remember feeling secretly proud when mine would turn black, like I was a rebel of sorts. A misunderstood soul.

The water is cool but not cold. It laps around my feet and I lift the dress, quickly tucking it into my knickers at the sides of my thighs so it comes up to just above my knees. I see tiny fish dart away as I walk along the shore a little. I can’t go far; I know they’ll be looking for me soon. But I needed this.

Growing up in a small town right on the ocean, I took it for granted. It was just always there, after all, so it wasn’t a novelty like it was for the truckloads of tourists who’d arrive in New Zealand every summer and lay claim to the beach, departing after the Christmas holidays, leaving nothing in their wake but litter and the odd broken heart. When something is readily available it often loses its allure, and as my friends and I got older that’s what happened. So it’s been a while since I’ve been down here, especially on my own, and it’s only now I realize how much I have missed it.