Page 64 of Deep Blue Lies
“So how about you learn to foil board?”
I blink at her.
“Um, I’ve no idea what that is?”
“That’s OK.” She looks delighted. “Kostas doesn’t either, even though I keep telling him to learn. I’ve got this plan to give foil-boarding lessons here. It’s perfect for days like this, and the clients love it.”
She looks at him again, and I think I hear a grunt. Otherwise he studiously ignores her.
“Kostas only likes things under the water, he doesn’t understand how you can have fun on it as well.”
“I’m sorry, what exactly is foil boarding?”
I glance again at Kostas, who’s shaking his head a little.
“It’s this.” Sophia pulls me to the noticeboard and points to one of the many photos pinned up on the noticeboard. It’s her, and she’s doing something like waterskiing, but not quite. Instead of standing on – well, water-skis – she’s on a surfboard thing, that seems to be flying a metre above the water.
“It’s like a wakeboard, but it has a hydrofoil under the water, so it’s a bit more like flying as well. And you can ride the wake like you’re surfing.” She grins.
“And you want me to do that?”
“It’s going to distract you, I promise.”
The last few moments are pretty much the only time this morning when I haven’t been thinking about DNA results. So maybe she has a point.
“But I don’t know how to do it.”
“That’s alright. I’m going to teach you. Here.” She strides over to a rack of wetsuits and flicks past several until she finds one she likes the look of. “Put this on. Have you ever done snowboarding or surfing?”
“No.”
“Wakeboarding?”
“No.”
“Skateboarding?”
“No. I mean, I’ve tried it once, for like five seconds.”
“Wow. What exactly have you done with your life?”
“Um? Studying? My mum wanted me to be a doctor…” I stop, realising what I’ve said. I meet her eyes. “What I mean is, the woman who brought me up, who isn’t my mother wanted me to be a…” I stop again, feeling my head descend back into this. If my mother isn’t my mother, how did I get to live with her? Why do I think she is?
“Stop it. Don’t worry about that for now. Focus on this. It’s easy. Sort of. Once you get the hang of it.”
I ask why I need the wetsuit as I fight to pull the grippy neoprene suit over my ankles, and I don’t really like the answer. It’s not so much for the cold apparently, as the protection it gives you from crashes. But even that’s not enough, because when I finally zip it up she adds a padded buoyancy aid and a helmet. Then she walks me down the beach to where another instructor, an American named Leo, is getting the equipment ready. She shows me the board, which has a giant “mast” attached beneath it, and connected to that something that looks like the wing of an aeroplane.
“It’s exactly like flying,” she explains. “We’ll tow you, very slowly at first, so you can get to your feet. And then a little faster, which will give you enough lift to get up on the foil. Then you lean back to fly higher. Forward to land. Lean left to go left, right to go right.”
Before we go out we do lots of drills on the beach, but eventually it’s time, and I clamber into the rib while Leo walks into the water with the board, turning it over and sinking the foil. Seconds later we’re cruising out into the bay, not as fast as when Kostas took me, but Leo is literally flying behind us. He doesn’t even need the tow rope. After he’s got the board up in the air it seems to stay up by magic, and he surfs up and down the wake while Sophia drives, occasionally looking back to check he’s still up. Finally though he tries to turn too fast and falls off. At once Sophia slows, then circles the boat around to pick him up.
“Jump in,” she tells me. “Your turn.”
FIFTY-EIGHT
My first attempt lasts less than a second. The moment the boat starts to pull me, the board rears up under my feet like it’s being pushed up from below, and I let go of the rope and scream. At least Sophia is right about the water, it’s not cold. My second go I manage a few seconds before the board does the same thing, and I’m in again.
Third time lucky doesn’t seem to apply either, and after that disaster Sophia circles the boat closer again, for some more shouted instructions. I try to focus on what she says – to keep my weight a bit forward, and not to panic. But it’s easier to say than do.
