So I couldn’t be more shocked to see the ink on her wrist. “Let me see,” I say now.

Mikki tilts her arm to show me. It’s a butterfly in shades of black and brown with a stripy fat body and horned antennae. I should say something—tell her I like it. But I don’t. It’s horrible.

We pull up stools. There are so many things I want to ask her. Not yet, though. I don’t want to kill the mood altogether.

It’s weird to eat nikujaga in this poky overheated kitchen. We ate it so many times in our drafty, cold kitchen in Cornwall, shivering after a surf.

“How’s the big smoke?” she asks.

I turned thirty recently and my birthday passed almost unnoticed. My new colleagues didn’t know it was my birthday and I didn’t tell them. Mum sent a card and a handful of friends texted or phoned, but that was it. “I’m loving it. I’ve met a nice bunch of people there already.”

“And how’s work?”

“Yeah, good. Busy. My clients smash themselves up on a regular basis.”

She looks disbelieving. “In London?”

“Yeah. Rugby, yoga classes, stuff like that.” This at least is true. I tell her about some of the injuries I’ve treated recently, but she seems like she’s only half-listening. “What about you? Are you still working at that nightclub?”

“No, I quit ages ago.”

Mikki must have inherited a small fortune when her granddad died because she’s mentioned she wants to buy a place here.

“So what are you doing?” I ask.

“Oh, this and that.” She swipes a flyer off the table (McMorris surfboards: handcrafted boards for those who know the difference) and fans herself with it. “Fuck, it’s hot.”

“Since when did you learn to swear?”

She smiles. “Blame the Aussies.”

I smile too, teeth clamped together so hard it hurts my jaw.

All the things I want to say are rising up my throat, threatening to burst out.

To learn more about and to buy The Swell, please visit prh.com/theswell.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

British-born Allie Reynolds is a former freestyle snowboarder who swapped her snowboard for a surfboard and moved to the Gold Coast in Australia, where she taught English as a foreign language for fifteen years. She still lives in Australia with her family. Reynolds's short fiction has been published in women's magazines in the UK, Australia, Sweden, and South Africa. Shiver is her debut novel.

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