Page 62 of Never Gonna Happen

‘What’s wrong?’ Jamie asked, grabbing her arm as she hopped up and down, squealing with pain.

‘Something’s stung me, OW OW OW!’ squealed Emily, her eyes filling with tears as further stabbing pains repeated across the arch of her foot. She scrunched her eyes shut and clung on to Jamie as she hobbled out of the water, keen to distance herself from whatever evil sea creature was attacking her.

A middle-aged woman sitting with her family on the sand spotted Emily hopping about and hurried over. ‘Let me look, let me look,’ she said in heavily accented English, grabbing Emily’s leg and holding it off the sand.

‘Jellyfish or sea urchin?’ asked Jamie.

‘No jellyfish here today,’ said the woman, peering closely at Emily’s foot. ‘Sea urchin. Ayo, to bizin fer atansion la. Sa bann zafair la mari bézer.’ She smiled at Emily, then stood up. ‘I will be back, stay there,’ she said, then hurried off back to her family, her patterned dress flapping in the breeze.

Emily tried to manage the pain by doing short panting breaths like she was giving birth. ‘What did the Creole bit mean?’ she asked.

‘Something along the lines of you needing to be careful because those things are really wicked.’

‘Brilliant. Wish I’d known that ten minutes ago.’

Jamie helped her on to her towel in the shade at the edge of the beach. She lifted her foot on to the opposite knee and could clearly see lots of tiny black spines embedded in the skin, which was already red and inflamed. She tried to breathe through the pain, but it felt like she’d been stabbed by a hundred tiny burning knives.

‘Are sea urchins poisonous?’ she asked, wondering if a terrible gangrenous infection was already creeping up her leg.

‘Not if you pull the spines out,’ said Jamie calmly.

‘Is that going to hurt?’

‘Does it hurt now?’

‘Fuck yes,’ said Emily, jiggling her foot.

‘Well, you’ll just have to be brave. Here comes our friend again.’

Emily looked up to see the woman jogging over the sand waving a tiny pair of metal tweezers. ‘Every island mama keeps these in her bag. You stay still now.’

Emily tried not to move, wincing as the woman pulled out the spines one after the other. It felt like the same sharp pain followed by a dull ache you get when you have a splinter removed, and it made Emily feel like she might throw up. Finally the last tiny spine was yanked out, and the woman went back to her handbag to find a tube of antiseptic cream. She rubbed it gently into Emily’s foot, then patted her leg.

‘Ayo, you will be fine now. Rest a little, the pain will go soon.’

‘Thank you,’ said Emily, her eyes full of tears of pain and gratitude. The woman smiled warmly and went back to her family.

‘You OK?’ said Jamie, passing her a cold can of Sprite from the cooler.

‘Yeah,’ said Emily, trying to ignore the dull throb in her foot as she looked at all the families up and down the beach. ‘I can see why people like deserted beaches, but this is much more my cup of tea. Lots of helpful people.’

‘More like Bognor.’

‘Exactly like Bognor. Hard to tell the difference, really.’

Jamie sat with her in the shade for as long as it took to drink a can of Coke, but Emily could see he was restless. Eventually he stood up and grabbed a football from the boot of the car, then wandered back on to the sand.

‘Since when did you play football?’ she asked, wondering what else she didn’t know about him.

‘I almost signed for Norwich City.’

Emily snorted. ‘You’re kidding.’

‘Of course I’m kidding. I played rugby at school, and I wasn’t very good at that either.’

‘So why the football?’

Jamie grinned. ‘It’s the best way to make new friends. Watch and see.’