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.”
The North Sea lies gray and calm before us, and I know she's right, and that I'd most like to put her back on her train. Instead, I stand there, key in hand, and the wind pulls at her jacket.
“I know what my permit says.”
