The surf school my uncle left me has four boards that float, a container with a leaking roof and a bank account I check only when I'm feeling brave. I am Jonas, thirty-one, a former pro with a knee that ended all that, and I have been back on the North Sea coast for a month, trying to remember how you sell waves to people who came here for the beach.
The woman on the sand this morning did not come for the beach.
She is in a lifeguard's red, a whistle around her neck, and she has been watching my beginner group for twenty minutes with her arms folded. When the last kid drags his board up, she walks over.
“Your rip is moving,” she says. Her accent is Portuguese; her English is better than mine. “You put six children in the water fifty metres from a channel that changed overnight. In Lisbon I'd have closed the beach.”
“This isn't Lisbon.”
“No. In Lisbon someone would have told you.” She looks at my knee, the brace under the wetsuit, and doesn't comment, which is somehow worse. “I'm the new guard on this stretch. I've read your permit. It expires in August unless you have a certified second instructor.”
“I know what my permit says.”
“Then you know you're two months from closing.” She unfolds her arms. Up close she has salt dried white on her eyelashes and a scar on her collarbone that I want, suddenly and unprofessionally, to know the story of. “I'm certified,” she says. “I'm also better than you. I'll help you. You'll hate it.” The wind is coming round to the west. Behind her, the sea I've spent my life reading is doing something I didn't see coming, and so, apparently, is she.
