Katie rarely asked about Finn, but perhaps the distance made it easier. 'He's good. Making friends wherever we go. On Wednesday he had everyone at the hostel drinking homemade punch and limboing beneath a belt he'd tied to two poles.' She'd arrived as everyone was dispersing and was sorry to have missed the fun. When Finn asked where she'd been, a flush crept up her neck as she answered, 'With Noah.'

'I can't be too much longer as Ed's waiting,' Katie said, 'but I've got news!'

'Okay...'

'On Friday, Ed and I went for dinner at the Oxo Tower. Do you remember it? We took Mum there for her fiftieth.'

'With the waiter who thought the three of us were sisters.'

'So Mum left a 20 percent tip.'

'He's probably tried that every night since.'

Katie laughed. 'It was a different waiter this time but he got an even bigger tip.'

'Why? Did he say you look like Scarlett Johansson?'

'Even better: when he brought out dessert my plate was decorated with these beautiful swirls of melted chocolate and in the centre was a ring box. Mia, Ed proposed! He got down on one knee and asked me to marry him!'

Sunlight fell through the glass panels of the phone box, illuminating Mia's fingers as she pressed them to her mouth. Katie and Ed were engaged. Heat prickled across her skin. She wedged her foot in the door to get air.

Her response was important every moment she hesitated would be counted. Her silence stretched out. A taut wordless void opened up between them.

It was Katie who spoke first. 'Mia?'

'Yes.'

'I'm engaged.'

'Yes.'

A pause. 'That's all you're going to say?'

'No ... sorry ... I was just thinking of what to say.'

' "Congratulations" is common.'

'Of course! Congratulations!'

'I wanted you to be a bridesmaid.'

She swallowed. 'Great...'

'You're not happy for me?'

'I am yes. I am.'

'That's odd, because it sounds like you're disappointed.'

'Sorry. It just took me by surprise. I didn't realize things were so serious.'

'You wouldn't since you haven't called in seven weeks.' Her retorts were whip-like in their speed and sharpness.

Mia forced the door wider, jamming her knee through the gap.

Katie's voice became a low whisper as if her mouth was pressed close to the receiver. 'You've never liked him, have you?'

'It doesn't matter what I think.'

'It seemed to when it came to my last boyfriend.'

The lash of the remark struck hard. 'That was completely different!'

'How?'

'You were deliberately trying to hurt me.'

Katie sighed. 'Everything will always be about you.'

'No-'

'I just want you to be happy for me. Can you be?'

She wanted to share her sister's happiness and tell her that she loved her, but the memory of what she'd done caught in her throat, blocking her words.

'Merry Christmas,' Katie said, and then the line went dead.

Mia remained in the phone box. She felt a familiar tightening in her gut, a cold twist of guilt. Katie had always dreamt of getting married and now she was engaged. For most sisters that would be cause for celebration and breathless questions about the engagement ring, the wedding date, plans for a venue. But Mia did not think to ask any of those things; she thought only of what had happened in a darkened corridor with the bitter taste of vodka lining her throat.

A group of travellers, ebullient and tanned, passed the phone box. Finn was in the centre of them, the white pompom of his Santa's hat bobbing as he laughed.

'Finn!' she called, pushing through the door.

He stopped immediately. 'What is it? Are you okay?'

The crowd paused, turning to look. She suddenly felt foolish, the urgency of a moment ago shrinking beneath their curious gazes. 'I've just spoken to Katie.'

'Is she okay?'

'Yes, fine. She and Ed are engaged.'

His eyebrows rose. 'Right. That's great news. Isn't it?'

She nodded.

'So, when's the wedding?'

'Oh. I didn't ask.'

He studied her for a moment. 'Are you sure you're okay?'

'Yes.'

'We're going to the pub for dinner. Come? We can have a celebratory drink.'

She'd love to lose herself amongst the easy smiles of the travellers, drink schooners of beer, shoot pool, dance to eighties rock on the jukebox but she knew her heart wouldn't be in it. 'I don't think...'

'Come on, it's Christmas! We haven't had a drink together in ages.'

The criticism was implicit. Her time had been absorbed by Noah. She rubbed her arm; sunlight caught the curve of her new bangle and it glittered like the sea. 'I'd love to have a drink together but I'm not in a pub mood.' She hoped he'd infer that she wanted to spend time with him. Just the two of them.

'Fair enough.' He shrugged. 'See you later.'

Mia returned to her room, slipped her journal and a slim package into her bag, and left again in search of Noah. She passed Zani, one of the group he and Jez travelled with, sitting cross-legged outside the hostel, smoking. She had a bleached-blonde crop and wore wide rainbow-coloured trousers that were trodden down at the heels.

'Do you know if Noah's at the beach?'

'They're all surfing Reds.' She proffered her joint.

'I'm good, thanks,' Mia said, and then moved on.

Crickets and cicadas hummed in the scrub-lined track that led to Reds. The beach took its name from the plateau of red rocks that lay like huge beached whales, now baking under a lowering sun. She slipped off her flip-flops and picked her way across them. The air was moist with a briny vapour lifting from the sea. Great lines of swell were breaking, the white-water re-forming into smaller waves that crashed against the rocks.

Her conversation with Katie drifted from her thoughts the moment she saw Noah. He was standing a few paces away from the edge of the rocks, his surfboard underarm. The sun was sinking to the west and golden streams of light gilded his silhouette. Years of surfing had honed his physique to a lean structure of muscle. Unable to see his expression, she imagined him looking serious, his gaze fixed on the water. She'd come to understand that for Noah surfing was a need, as basic as hunger or thirst.

She wondered if it was his passion for the sea that drew her to him with such unnerving force. There'd been other boyfriends mostly brief and unremarkable relationships that passed with the seasons but she'd experienced nothing like this.

'Hey,' she said, announcing herself.

He turned. Smiled.

'I was just looking for you to say Merry Christmas.'

He loosened his grip on his surfboard, but didn't put it down. 'Merry Christmas, Mia.'

She hadn't seen him all day and wanted to place her lips against his bare chest and feel the heat of his skin. 'I've something for you,' she said, feeling her bag at her side, which contained his present. Realizing that he'd have nowhere to put it, she said, 'I'll give it to you later.'

'Sorry. I haven't got you anything. I didn't think...'

'This isn't a Christmas present, just something I found.' It was a Hemingway book, her favourite: The Old Man and the Sea. It had been on the swap shelf at the last hostel they'd stayed in, so she'd traded it for her Lonely Planet, and had inscribed on the inside cover: 'To Noah, the freshest words about the sea ... with love, Mia xx.' She'd wrapped it in pages torn from a magazine and tied it with string.

'Let's catch up later, then.' He leant forward and kissed her. When he pulled away, his gaze darted back to the surf where the breakers rolled in, smooth and powerful.

'You should get out there.'

He moved back to the edge of the rocks, waiting for a lull between sets. When one came he launched the board into the water and then dived after it, cutting through the back of a wave. It took several powerful strokes to reach the board and then he slid onto it and paddled determinedly through the seething wash.

Mia gathered her hair from her face and tied it into a low knot at the base of her head, then sat, hooking her arms over her knees. She enjoyed watching him surf; she'd spent enough hours on Cornish beaches to recognize his talent. He had an easy, fluid style and she noticed how he hung back from the other surfers who bobbed like seals in the line-up. He'd wait on an outside section, hitting a wave where it broke at its steepest or picking off the set wave that the other surfers chose to leave. She knew the risks he took, but he trained hard for the hold downs. He'd told her that spear fishing helped his agility, and he did other exercises, like carrying rocks underwater to build up lung capacity and strength. She held an image of him gliding along the seabed, his hands wrapped round a boulder, a stream of silver air bubbles floating from his lips.

As he paddled, she recalled how his body had been raised above hers last night, his fists pressed into the white sheet of her bed, the veins in his forearms standing proud. She had turned her head and licked the delicate skin at his inner elbow. At her touch his arms had bent and he lowered himself onto her, covering every inch of her body with his.

A shadow fell over her and she looked up to see Jez staring at her with one eyebrow raised quizzically. 'All right?'

She flushed a deep crimson as if her thoughts had been transparent.

He lowered himself onto the rock she sat on, positioning himself a couple of inches behind her. She felt it put her at a disadvantage somehow, having to turn more fully to face him.

Jez's skin was weather-beaten; grooves deeper than his years cut into his forehead, and there were sun lesions on his nose. He was wirier than Noah, but they were a similar height. Since the evening she'd met Jez, they'd only passed one another a couple of times in the hostel; she'd smile but would feel relieved when he didn't stop. She found something disconcerting in the way his gaze followed her, as if he was always watching.

'Santa bring you everything you wanted?' he said.

'He doesn't know my address. How about you?'

'What I want doesn't come gift wrapped.' He pulled a pack of tobacco from his pocket and began to roll a cigarette. There was dirt beneath his nails and his knuckles were flecked with pink scars. 'Where are you headin' next?'

'New Zealand. In a fortnight. Have you been?' Mia asked.

'I'm as well travelled as a paper aeroplane. Noah's the jet-setter.' He lit his roll-up and the sweet smoke drifted towards her.

For a minute, maybe two, neither of them said anything more and they both watched the surf. Noah took off on a wave that reared well over head high, cutting back and forth in a whoosh of spray.

'Pretty incredible, eh?'

'Yes, he is,' she said, keeping her eyes on the water. 'Does he ever compete?'

Jez stared at her. 'He was on the pro tour for five years, paid to surf the best breaks in the world.'

'He never said...'

'There's a lot he never says.'

'So he was sponsored?'

'Yeah. Had a sweet little thing going with Quiksilver. Until he quit the tour.'

'Why?'

'You'd have to ask Noah that.'

She glanced at him sideways, unsure what he meant. Noah had told her that he and Jez surfed a lot together as boys, spending every second they weren't in school chasing waves. 'You weren't interested in doing it professionally?'

He laughed, smoke bubbling from his mouth. 'Let's just say the opportunity never came my way.'

'It must be good taking time out now to travel together.'