Page 82 of One Last Thing
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You can debate the details later,’ Mum interjects, grabbing my shoulders as Nico and I stare each other down. ‘The point is you were brilliant in the water. And not just the water. Look at you up on that horse after years of not going near one. Please don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re not outgoing or you’re too much of a city girl these days to grab a paddle and pull your weight. I think with your help we might have a chance of winning this race, so long as the plank works.’
‘It’s not a plank, it’s a boat,’ Nico tries to convince us. ‘And it works.’
‘There you go, you have a boat, you have a willing crew.’ She gestures at the four others in our team, who are now waving us over with their stupid feather-plume hats. Turning back to me, she softens her voice to say, ‘Your dad never had the guts to do it while he was alive. What do you say we make him proud by giving it our best shot?’
Both her and Nico are watching me expectantly.
I close my eyes momentarily in despair and then open them begrudgingly.
‘You should consider writing and selling pep talks as a side hustle,’ I mutter.
‘Does that mean my pep talk worked?’ Mum checks, her and Nico sharing a hopeful look. ‘Are you in?’
‘Depressingly, yes,’ I say, prompting Nico to whoop and give Mum a high-five.
‘Come on, it starts soon,’ Nico tells us, turning on his heel and rushing down to where the rest of the team are waiting, kicking off his shoes near the boat.
Mum wraps an arm around my shoulders and leads me towards our destiny.
‘I’m nervous but excited,’ she says, waving at the crowd who have no idea who she is or notice her waving at them. ‘Imagine if we win! I hope I don’t let the team down.’
‘No time for introductions, but Dawn, Megan, these are for you,’ Nico says, handing us a paddle each as we take off our shoes. ‘You have to climb aboard only once you’re in the water. When the horn goes, we pull the boat in and once we’re all on, we paddle towards that post out there, go around it and back in. Whoever gets back first wins.’
‘Wait, one last addition to the boat,’ Mum trills, pulling the box of ashes from her bag and placing it carefully in the middle. ‘That cannot go in the water, all right boys? That’s Megan’s father in there.’
They look confused.
‘Mum, you have got to stop saying stuff like that, it creeps people out,’ I groan, keeping my loose white shirt on over my bikini but taking off my skirt and rolling it up to put away in my bag.
‘Aren’t you going to bring Henry with you, too?’ Mum wants to know.
‘I don’t think—’
‘It’s the reason we’re here. He wanted to do it, too. We’re a team.’
Lifting my eyes to the sky, I exhale. ‘Fine. This is so weird.’ Pulling out the box of ashes, I place it in the middle of theraft next to Mum’s box, glancing at my other crewmates apologetically. ‘That also needs to stay out of the water if possible. Thanks.’
‘Okay, take your places,’ Nico bellows, as I look nervously down the line at the other idiots taking part in this thing, every raft as ridiculous as the next.
One guy is carrying what looks like a large cardboard box on pink pool noodles.
The horn blares, and my heart leaps with nerves as I dash into the water after the others, Mum next to me. The cold water hits my legs and I gasp as we wade further in before clambering up with the others onto our boat, paddle in hand, finding my balance in a kneeling position and then helping Nico with hauling Mum up onto the raft next to me.
‘Allez! Allez!’ Our crew shout in a disjointed chorus as we all begin frantically paddling.
With the crowds on the beach cheering behind us, I experience a rush of adrenaline as my heart races. I feel jittery, paddling with all my might, suddenly determined to win this ludicrous event as though it’s important. When I hear Mum go, ‘Isn’t this hilarious! Ooh, that girl hasn’t even managed to start yet’, I find myself yelling, ‘Focus, Mum!’, the competitive streak in me flaring. I’m pleased to see that she gets back to paddling quickly.
We manage to overtake the leading raft just before turning round the post and, with the end in sight, we find a fresh wave of motivation.Oh my god, I love this,I think as my arms ache with the effort of continually cutting the paddle through the water. It’s not like I don’t exercise, I take pride in keeping in good shape with cardio and yoga. But there’s something about being a part of a team, the feeling of camaraderie that’s being created here on this wobbly butultimately sturdy raft without me even knowing the names of the others yet. I smile at Mum’s shriek when she’s struck by a particularly big splashback from Nico’s paddle ahead of hers and yet again feel glad that she’s here, too, even though she’s rubbish at this. She’s barely paddling and maybe does one paddle for every four the rest of us do. It’s like she’s doing it in slow motion. But still, she’s here, living it at the same time. We’ll be able to talk about it.
People on the beach are up on their feet, their whoops and cheers roaring in my ears as the water from the paddles splashes against my legs. When we cross the finish line in first place, I can’t stop laughing. Mum is squealing next to me, ‘We did it! We did it!’, and the lads are already jumping off into the water in celebration. Nico, still on the raft, has swivelled round to look at me, his skin dewy from splashes, his wide smile dazzling, his eyes gleaming with excitement, his T-shirt plastered to his toned muscles from the water.
Fuck, he looks good.
And the whole time I’m laughing, clutching my stomach, wiping the tears from my eyes. Mum grabs the two boxes of ashes as Nico slides off the raft and then helps her down into the knee-deep water, and she carries them safely to shore, holding them aloft and bellowing Queen’s ‘We Are the Champions’ at the top of her lungs mildly off-key but with admirable enthusiasm, which, to everyone on the beach who have zero context of our story, must look particularly barmy. But to be honest, that’s how it should be, because she is barmy. And she’s right. We are the champions, thanks to Dad.
As I hop off the raft into the water, I look up to find Nico has waded around to my side. Beaming at me and crying, ‘We won!’, he grabs me round the waist and effortlessly liftsme up and my legs instinctively wrap around his hips and my ankles link at his back as I squeal with laughter, nuzzling my face into his neck. When I raise my head, he reveals no intention of putting me back down yet, his arms holding me up around him securely, our smiles inches from each other, my hands now cupping his jaw. The beach fades away into a blur as I watch his eyes flicker down to my lips before he swallows, his expression suddenly serious. My breath catches and my thumb brushes along his cheekbone, and it’s as though I finally have permission to study him up close, my eyes drinking in every detail of his face, his bold dark eyebrows, the creases around his eyes, the grating stubble under my thumb, the gentle slope of his nose, his full lips. I think he knows what I’m doing but he doesn’t seem bothered by my gaze. He exhales softly as though relieved by it.
