Chapter Fourteen

While its name made it sound like a magazine you would find in the fetish section on a top shelf in the corner shop, Wild, Wet and Windy’s website insisted it was ‘the best one-stop wetsuit shop on the south coast’. As much as Lisa didn’t relish the thought of wetsuit shopping, she was in no doubt that purchasing one before her next swimming session with Toby was preferable to slipping on the previously used offering from Babs. Passing a row of shops she took the right turn dictated by her phone and pulled over in front of Wild, Wet and Windy, next to a pale-blue-and-cream, split-screen Volkswagen camper van, of course. Lisa took a breath. She tried to remember if she had learnt any surfer language that would stand her in good stead from her years of watching Neighbours with Flick. Why didn’t they surf more? They lived in Australia, for goodness’ sake!

The black sun awnings that hung over the large shop windows had the words ‘Quick Silver, Rip Curl and Reef’ written across them. Oh Lord! Lisa already felt out of her depth, and even the words had more energy implicit within them than she did. To her right there was a large display of canoes and kayaks – elaborately decorated with flashes of bright colours and flames – and the seats outside the shop windows were a trendy arrangement of wire cubes filled with beach pebbles, topped with driftwood benches. Lisa bit her lip and wondered if slipping into Babs’ used wetsuit might be the easier option after all. She didn’t want to be laughed out of the shop if she confessed all she wanted was a wetsuit for swimming in a heated pool, with a slightly slobbery Newfoundland who erred on the lazy side of life.

Her memories of Neighbours being no use, she tried to remember what Babs had said she should go for. Engaging in an in-depth conversation with someone whom she assumed would be a surfer-type sales assistant wasn’t something she particularly wanted to do anyway. Maybe if she got the facts straight in her head she would be able to just pick one up off the rail – it had to be that simple, didn’t it? They need never know I’m a complete wetsuit novice.

Deciding that walking in and looking like she knew what she was doing was the way forward, Lisa got out of her van and slammed the door. Reminding herself that going through with this meant she wouldn’t have to face borrowing a wetsuit from Babs, she took a breath and reached for the door handle. Noticing the word ‘Animal’ written on the blind she smiled; ha, maybe she wasn’t going to feel so out of place after all!

As she walked in Lisa did a double take. The shop was much larger on the inside than the outside had led her to believe and, on first glance, there wasn’t a wetsuit in sight. Bugger! She began to wander around, attempting to look as if she knew exactly what she was after and where to find it. The shop was much more stylish than she had imagined too. Not in the way of the shops she frequented in London, of course, the ones where you were paying for the floor space as much as the garments, and where they tried so hard to impress that everything about them – from the highly polished floor to the thoroughly tailored serving staff – shone. But, nevertheless, Wild, Wet and Windy had style. It was evident in the hard wooden floors, inlayed with checker-plate metal; brown leather sofas placed to allow comfort while pondering which of the many trainers, hiking boots or sandals – despite the season – suited your sporting or leisure needs; and the carefully arranged displays in front of scenes of the great outdoors. This was a shop that took itself and its sports seriously.

Lisa was fascinated. The array of equipment for almost every outdoor sporting eventuality was quite something. She looked at the skateboards and helmets, the idea had always appealed but she and Flick had skipped the skateboarding phase in favour of rollerblades. An image of them giggling and attempting to glide, while mostly falling over, through the high street with a Sony Discman each clipped to their hips sprung to mind and made her smile.

‘You OK there?’

Lisa jumped and turned to see the young male sales assistant standing beside her. He smiled as her cheeks inexplicably turned red.

‘No!’

‘You’re not OK?’ He raised his eyebrows.

‘I mean, yes. Sorry, I thought you asked if I wanted anything.’ Lisa grimaced.

‘And do you?’

‘Do I?’

‘Want anything? Something I can help you with, maybe?’

The man, in his early twenties, was perfectly nice, friendly and helpful, not intimidating at all, but somehow the words ‘I am after a wetsuit for swimming with a dog’ didn’t want to pass her lips. ‘I just need …’ Lisa gazed round the shop, ‘um, one of these,’ she stated striding towards a display of woolly hats.

‘Ah, well we have plenty of choice here. Did you want a beanie, headband, bobble beanie?’

‘Bobble beanie?’ Lisa laughed.

‘They’re very popular.’ The man smiled, passing Lisa a hat that was striped in colours reminding her of Neapolitan ice cream, topped with a large, pink bobble. She slipped it on.

Oh wow! Lisa was surprised by how soft and warm it felt. A quick glance in the mirror confirmed it didn’t look too bad either; not compared to the pom-pom hats her Granny Blake had knitted her when she was younger. The autumn was off to a mild, damp start, but she could imagine that having such a warm, cosy hat when the weather turned would actually be a good idea with her new profession.

Fifteen minutes later Lisa was standing by the till paying for the bobble beanie, a scarf and a pair of mittens, all in matching colours. Matt, as she had learnt the sales assistant’s name was, certainly knew how to up sell. If it wasn’t for her bank balance, and the fact she still had a wetsuit to find and purchase, she would easily have been adding a pair of waterproof boots and thermal socks too. Pleased with her stash she took her bag and smiled.

‘Thanks, Matt.’

‘No problem, I hope they keep you warm.’

‘I’m sure they’ll be a godsend. I’m a dog walker, out in all weathers,’ Lisa responded easily.

‘A dog walker. How funny! You don’t swim with them too, do you? We had one in last week after a wetsuit.’

Lisa stopped. ‘It’s funny you should say that, Matt.’

As Matt led Lisa up a flight of metal, checker-plate stairs, she couldn’t help but notice the intense smell of rubber and the large display of Sex Wax that lined the wall. Recalling her earlier fetish thoughts relating to Wild, Wet and Windy she attempted to stifle a giggle and coughed.

‘It’s strong, isn’t it, but you get used to it. I’m pretty immune to the smell myself.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Lisa responded, before doing a double take as they reached the top of the stairs and a room with a large array of wetsuits in a variety of styles and sizes.

‘Shall I leave you to have a look around?’ Matt asked.

‘Oh, sure.’

Lisa tried hard to remember what it was Babs had said she needed. Matt busied himself behind a desk adjacent to the large changing room, which looked somewhat like an après-ski lodge, with a sixty-inch LED television on the wall showing extreme action shots, and two more brown, leather sofas for those waiting for cubicles. Through an archway beyond, Lisa could see a display of bodyboards and surfboards. Grateful she didn’t need one of those, because she wouldn’t know where to start, she turned her attention back to the wetsuit room.

She walked between the displays and noticed a whole section dedicated to dry gear for kayaking. She knew she needed some for dog walking in the wet weather and picked up a jacket.

‘That’s not a wetsuit,’ Matt called across.

Lisa laughed, realising he was teasing her. ‘Thanks, Matt, even I, a wetsuit novice, know that.’

‘Ah, so you are a novice.’ He grinned. ‘Would you like some help then?’

With Matt’s guidance – wetsuits seemed to be his mastermind subject – Lisa was soon in a section of ‘smooth skin’ wetsuits, apparently so the dog’s claws didn’t snag the material so easily, looking for the suit that would allow the ‘greatest flexibility’ for swimming. Lisa felt Matt was being over optimistic about the extent of actual swimming she intended to do with Toby, but happily played along, taking three wetsuits to the changing room.

Wondering how on earth Babs managed, Lisa heaved and wiggled her size twelve figure, into the first, her favourite because it had a purple trim – wetsuits were not Lisa’s mastermind subject. She wanted to get a better view of what she looked like. It wasn’t that Toby would particularly care how she looked, it was just that personal pride wouldn’t allow her to look like a hippopotamus in public. The only way to obtain a better view was to open the curtain of the cubicle and stand further back from the surfboard shaped mirror. Deciding it was better to embarrass herself now in front of Matt, who she would never see again, than everybody at Toby’s swimming class, who she would have to see on a regular basis, she pushed back the curtain.

Taking in the now clearer view of herself, she screwed up her face and squinted. Hmmm. Well, it wasn’t exactly unflattering, it did a bit of squashing here and there and she might have to stay off the Dr Oetker, but otherwise it wasn’t too bad.

‘So this is where you’ve been hiding!’

‘Bloody hell!’ Nathan Baker was the last person Lisa expected to see when she had stepped out of the cubicle. ‘I mean … Nathan … you’re … you’re here.’ Her heart was pounding too fast through the ‘smooth skin’ of her wetsuit and her cheeks were firing up to beacon heat. She attempted to rein her reaction in as she took in the sight of him, despite the fact he looked even better in the flesh than he had when she had been snooping on his Facebook photos.

With fine stubble across his chin and ruffled hair, he looked every bit the rugged outdoor man. He was wearing a T-shirt with a surfboard on it and light-blue Levi 501 jeans, the way he used to, though his muscular legs clearly filled them out better than Lisa remembered. His jeans had a lived-in look that probably belied their real age. Even as a teenager, Nathan had liked dressing well. Lisa had spent many Saturday afternoons taking the train to Brighton with him and wandering round the clothes shops; trips that always seemed to involve him coming home with more bags than her.

‘So, why have you been hiding from me, Lisa?’ He smiled as he walked towards her with the clear intention of giving her a hug.

The fact she was wearing a wetsuit meant the contact was more intimate than she was prepared for. She hoped he couldn’t feel how rapidly her heart was beating. ‘Oh, I haven’t been hiding,’ she offered with an overly light laugh.

‘Well, clearly you are not hiding now,’ Nathan raised an eyebrow, stepped back and looked Lisa up and down in her wetsuit, ‘but you have been ignoring my messages.’

Lisa couldn’t quite believe it. The thing about pivotal moments in your life, especially ones involving a rejected declaration of love and a heart-wrenching farewell was that they were never meant to be followed up over a decade later by meeting in a surf shop while inappropriately dressed in a wetsuit. Lisa had seen enough films to know that disappearing into the sunset meant the credits rolled. And yet here they were.

‘I haven’t been ignoring you,’ Lisa protested. ‘I’ve …’ been thinking about you a lot recently, got no idea what to say to you ‘… I’ve just, you know, been busy.’ She hoped that would be enough to excuse the fact she hadn’t answered, not even when he had invited her out for a drink.

Nathan grinned at her.

Oh Lord! If only he hadn’t grown quite so very well into his looks.

‘Too busy for me?’

Lisa smiled, hoping her cheeks weren’t turning purple. ‘Just busy.’ She felt as if her nerve endings were all tingling as her body reacted to the shock of being back in the proximity of Nathan Baker. It reminded her of being back at school when just glimpsing him across the dinner hall could send every cell of her being into a frenzy. She found she could barely speak, the wetsuit was constricting her chest, her body felt too hot inside the rubber and more than anything she needed to make an emergency call to Felicity, just like she had the first time Nathan Baker had asked her out.

‘You know, I get busy too, working shifts; I’m a fireman.’

Lisa nodded and congratulated herself on not letting slip she thought he was a male stripper and attempted to push away the – unhelpful in her already over-heated state – image she still had of him in his uniform in her head from her evening of snooping on Facebook.

‘But I’d make time for you,’ he added, unleashing a very lovely smile.

‘Oh!’ was all she could manage to utter, wishing she wasn’t feeling quite so weak at the knees, and caught off guard by her feelings and the situation.

Realising Lisa wasn’t going to say any more, Nathan changed the subject. ‘So what brings you here?’

Lisa looked down, seeing as she was standing in a shop called Wild, Wet and Windy in a wetsuit it seemed a bit of a stupid question. She laughed, welcoming the release from the tension she could feel inside. ‘I needed to get some groceries.’

‘Ha ha! But I think you know exactly what I meant.’

She didn’t.

‘What sport are you into? Your shorty wetsuit, while mighty fine on you, could be used in … many ways.’

Trying not to over think the meaning of Nathan’s pause, she took a breath. ‘Well, this is simply going to be used to swim with my good friend Toby.’ She was aware she was using Toby as her Bunbury once more, but she didn’t want Nathan to think she had presumptuously contacted him in the hope they could pick up where they had left off; or that she was a desperado in the love department.

As Lisa wondered if that was a hint of disappointment she saw flick across Nathan’s expression, Matt stepped through to the changing room area. He greeted Nathan like an old friend before directing his attention back to Lisa.

‘Sorry. This is Nate Baker. He teaches our surf school during the summer, for the local primary kids.’

Words failing her, Lisa nodded.

Matt continued, ‘What do you think, Nate? Lisa here’s a pet-sitter, she needs the shorty for swimming with a client. I think it’ll be just the job, don’t you?’

‘It’s perfect!’ Nathan smiled a knowing smile at Lisa, leaving her in no doubt he knew she had intended him to think otherwise.

Uh oh, double desperado!

‘Actually Lisa and I go way back—’

‘Oh cool, you know each other,’ Matt responded cheerily.

Nathan smiled. ‘Sure, we do. We were good friends once.’

Good friends! Lisa felt a sting of disappointment at the words and couldn’t help but think how she and Nathan had been oh-so much more than good friends.