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Low Water, High Surf

Content Warnings; violence, injury detail, sexual threat, bad language, alcohol use, minor crime, consensual sexual activity (implied).



Main Characters

Olympe Viola Reese, 27, a British-French woman. A former Interpol detective who carries shadows and trauma from her personal and professional lives. She yearns for stability and healing.

Victor Davern, 29, a Australian-New Zealander man. A statistical analyst in a financial services company, and a keen surfer. He’s looking for meaning and purpose in life.


Chapter 01: An End and a Beginning


There are two main types of tall women. One kind are statuesque, full bodied, with a defined waist and lyre-shaped hips a skirt will hang from and sway emphatically. They look feminine and delicious as they move.

The other kind are like a teenage boy who got his adult growth spurt last summer, grew 10cm, and now is filling out his muscles. Broad-shouldered and narrow hipped, they look boyish, leggy, and graceful as a colt.

The young blonde standing on the balcony of her small rented apartment was the coltish type. She wore a simple, pale green sleeveless midi dress, cinched at the waist with a ribbon belt. There was an old bullet scar on her left deltoid, and her left forearm was in a virgin white plaster cast; there wasn’t a single Sharpie scrawl from a friend on it. The woman ran fingers through her pixie cut hair, that shade of honey-blonde which is almost ginger and streaks paler in the sun. She sighed and spoke aloud to no-one.

“Second worst month of my entire life.” She sounded like one of those posh English women who front the bulletins on BBC World News.

There was no obvious reason for such low spirits. It was late spring in Honolulu. The rich blue sky was peppered with the best Studio Ghibli clouds, and the air was a pleasant 24 Celcius. The ocean sparkled in the distance, dotted with surfers.

Her smartphone pinged for attention; it was her attorney calling.

“Hello, Takako, do you have news?”

“The best news, Olympe! You’re in the clear. The police have given me your passports and…” a slight hesitation, “The evidence. I’m on my way over to you now. Be there in 10 minutes.”

Olympe smiled for the first time in weeks, and put on a pot of coffee. She hunted up a bag of stale Danish pastries, wrapped it in a damp tea towel, gave them a very quick zap in the microwave to refresh them, and laid out the snack for her guest.

Takako Shimura, a compact Japanese-Hawaiian woman of nearly 40, was giving serious aunt energy. She took off her shoes, hugged Olympe, and they sat down to consult.

“Here are your passports.” Takako laid the two documents -- French and British, because Olympe was a dual national -- on the table. “You can go wherever and whenever you want. The district attorney told me there’s zero chance of a prosecution against you, because of the overwhelming evidence in your defense.” She gently touched Olympe’s cast. “He also asked me to give you his apologies for the delay in releasing you. Kevin’s family has friends in the right places, who’ve made things difficult. I don’t like to say this, but I think you should leave the islands and probably not come back.”

“Yes. I’ll go as soon as I can book a flight. Carry-on luggage only.” Olympe leant forward. “Takako, thank you very much for being with me during this whole nasty business. May I ask you to help me deal with the things I’m going to leave behind? I need to wrap up the lease on my flat and the car. And get rid of my gun.” She looked at the cardboard box of evidence. She knew what it contained; a sleek 9mm pistol and two magazines, one of them three rounds short of full. She pushed the box away from her. “There’ll be some cases of clothes and other things, and my surfboard. It can go by seafreight. I’m in no hurry to surf again.”

“Sure thing, Olympe. I’ll get a paralegal on it. Where are you going to go?”

“Japan. My brother lives there. He’ll let me stay for a while so I can clear my head. After that, I don’t know. I’ll send you my final destination when I work out what it’s going to be.”

As soon as Takako left, Olympe tapped up the JAL app on her smartphone and booked a one-way business class ticket to Haneda. She packed her carry-on case and her big, cross-body Launer handbag with essentials, and took a taxi to the airport. Three hours later she was sitting in the small JAL lounge on the airside, sipping a Campari and soda, exchanging messages with her big brother.

“@Yancy, I’m free! Is it okay if I come and stay with you for a bit?”

“You don’t even need to ask, Pia. When are you arriving?”

Olympe copy-pasted her flight details into the chat.

“Okay. Sorry, I can’t meet you then, Pia, but you can get from Haneda to Shin-Yurigaoka easily on the airport coach.” The three little dots pulsed on the screen as her elder brother began to type out a lot of information about which ticket to buy, where to find the correct bus stop, and so on. Pia cut him off.

“I’ll be fine, Yancy. I can speak Japanese just as well as you.”

12 hours later Olympe was hugging and crying with her brother, his Japanese wife Hikaru, and their toddler daughter, Eimi, in the entrance of their little house near Shin-Yurigaoka station in Kawasaki City. She gave them the meagre souvenirs she had bought in the duty free shop at Honolulu airport. Chocolate coated macadamia nuts, Kona coffee beans, and pure Hawaiian sea salt.

“Perhaps I should sprinkle it to purify myself,” she quipped.

“You did nothing wrong,” Hikaru told her. “You only defended yourself. Come in. I’ve got dinner ready. The futon is laid out for you in the tatami room. Stay as long as you like.”

It was Golden Week, a major national holiday, so the family were able to spend quality time together. Olympe ate well and exercised. She had the cast taken off her arm, revealing a still red pattern of defensive wounds. She played every day with the delightful little Eimi, who made her feel a bit broody. *Where the hell did that come from?* She decided to shake off the unusual sensation with an extended holiday. *Though all my life is a holiday now,* she remembered. *I'll go somewhere different.*

Olympe visited the Australian Embassy for a tourist visa.

A few days later she was in Sydney, New South Wales. Although it was late autumn in the southern hemisphere, the weather reminded her of a pleasant early summer day in the UK. Puffy white cumulus clouds were ranked across a blue sky, and the air was a mild 20 degrees. The scent of eucalyptus trees drifted in the streets.

The overnight flight had been pleasant. Olympe’s jetlag was minimal, due to the one hour difference in timezone. She booked into a west-facing Sunset Room in the EVE hotel in the Surry Hills district. 27 square metres was enough space for her meagre luggage. Enough space to begin to decompress her memories, and plan a proper exploration of the city. She opened her laptop and logged on to a property rental site.

<<To be continued...>>

Chapter 02: Breakup

Victor Davern’s alarm went off at 6:30 a.m. but he was already awake. Emma had spent the night with a girl friend again. The early light filtered through the cheap blinds of his run-down flat, casting stripes across the ceiling. He stretched, scratched his jaw, thought, *I really need a shave,* and dragged himself to the kitchen to make coffee. Instant, as usual. He stood barefoot by the counter, sipping, scrolling through overnight emails from work.

It was going to be another dull workday in the office, another spreadsheet-heavy Friday. He pulled on khaki chinos, a pale blue button-down shirt, and his most comfortable smart leather shoes. The familiar commute; a bus to the station, and a crowded train, to reach the high-rise office building in the central business district. The office hum of air conditioning and clicking keyboards was broken only by the occasional phone call. Vic kept his headphones on, ploughing through datasets. His boss swung by around 11.

“Any weekend plans, Victor?” Olivia asked.

Vic gave a half-smile. “Surfing.”

“Forecast’s looking a bit rough.”

“Yeah,” Vic replied, “I like it that way.”

The morning passed in formulas and figures. At lunch, he ducked out to a sandwich shop and checked his phone. A text from Emma. “We need to talk tonight.”

He exhaled slowly. *I know what that means.*

It was about 18:30 when Victor pushed open the door to his unit, kicked off his shoes, and dropped his laptop bag by the table. Emma was sitting on a kitchen stool, scrolling furiously on her phone, an untouched glass of white wine in front of her. She looked up, eyes flashing angrily.

“You’re late again.”

Vic frowned. “I texted,” he said, spreading his hands. “Work ran over.”

“Work always runs over, Vic.” Emma stood up, began to pace to and fro. “And then it’s the gym. Or surfing. Or ‘grabbing a drink with the guys.’ There’s always something.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s been a rough week.”

Emma threw her phone onto the counter with a clatter. “It’s always a rough week. I’m sick of you being around but never here.”

“Come on, that’s not fair,” he muttered defensively.

“Not fair?” she interrupted. “Vic, we’re living together but I feel like a housemate. Like a backup plan. What I wanted was to be a couple. Be a real part of each other’s life.” Her voice dropped low, deadly calm. “I’ve already got a place lined up. Maddy’s cousin needs a flatmate. I’m leaving you.”

A long silence stretched out between them.

“Yeah,” Vic said finally, his jaw tight. “Okay. Fine.”

Emma grabbed her bag and keys, swigged half her wine like it was water. “I’ll pick up the rest of my stuff later.”

The door slammed hard enough to rattle the cheap picture frames.

Vic exhaled slowly. Something twisted in his heart, and he had to push it away, find a distraction from the raw emotion. He ran a hand through his hair, pulled it into a messy bun, and headed to the fridge. Beer. He stood on his little balcony under the early evening sky, letting the distant hum of traffic and chatter from a neighbour’s TV fill the emptiness his ex-girlfriend had left behind. The dark sea beckoned.

*Tomorrow I’m hitting the waves. Early. Hard.*

Saturday morning Vic was up at five, driving his rattly Audi eastward as the sky grew pink over the city. The old car coughed and groaned, but made it to the beach. He pulled on his wetsuit, tied his hair back into a tight ponytail, and jogged down to the water. The surf wasn’t great. It was messy, unpredictable, but he was grateful for it. Every paddle out cleared his head a little more. Every wave he chased was a moment he didn't have to think about the flat, the job, or the empty side of the bed.

By mid-morning, he was sitting cross-legged on the sand, surfboard stuck upright beside him, sipping from a takeaway coffee cup. His phone buzzed with messages he didn't check. It was enough to feel the sun warming his shoulders, the salt water drying on his skin, and the rhythm of the waves rolling in.

Life was moving forward in the city. But Vic was just waiting for the next set.

<<To be continued...>>