IN THE HOURS BETWEEN • TC

12. Sitting Around

Fen is waiting with her phone when they are back at camp. Una wonders if her mum has been taking pictures the whole time or only now, when she’s being hauled ungracefully up the beach.

“Who won?” she asks, and Una says no one as both Frank and Timothée say me.

“Mm, I think it was probably Timothée,” Sean says as Frank lowers Una to the ground.

“You’re just saying that because it’s his birthday,” Frank squints at his dad, and Timothée chuckles, wiping his face with the corner of a clean beach towel.

Una watches him run a hand through his wet hair, and she pushes a strand of her own hair out of her face, shivering a little as her mum wraps a towel around her.

“I think Timmy won too,” she says quietly, and everyone looks at her. There is silence for a moment, and then Timothée pipes up.

“I think Frank won,” he says, and there is a general murmur of chuckles and annoyance, a general acceptance that Timothée is too nice for his own good.

She watches Timothée hoisting up his swim shorts, pulling the string as tight as it will possibly go. Knotting it twice. They’re a little too big, Una notices - he keeps pulling them up at the sides. They’re obviously borrowed from Frank, who is generally wider than Timothée. (Not that it would take much to be wider than Timothée. She glances at his stomach as he pats himself dry.)

“Are we all hungry, then?” Sean asks, stretching his arms behind him and scratching his neck.

Frank agrees immediately, Timothée nods, and Una makes a little noise that could be interpreted either way. She realises she’s been zoning out - everyone else is now packing up, shaking sand off of towels, packing suncream into drawstring bags.

Timothée puts his book in her bag without asking; just removes one of the straps from her shoulder, plops his book in. Una moves the strap back onto her shoulder and looks at him as he pats her shoulder twice, quickly. Moves away, helping Frank fold up his towel.

“We’ve got a reservation for one, but we can get something now if you’re all hungry. Yeah? An ice cream or something?”

Una wants to say that it’s pointless, that Timmy’ll just get a bottle of water. Wants to remind her mum that Timmy doesn’t like ice cream.

But then Timmy nods and she wonders if he does like ice cream. If he was just angry, that day with the picture gallery and the bench. That day he sat there, cradling his bottle, so much conveyed in the way he stared at her. So much, and nothing at all.

They start to head back the way they came, back into the mass of people. The beach is filling up now, people filtering in from the cars parked along the coastline. Soon, it will be awful.
She wraps her towel around herself and licks her lips. Everything tastes of salt.

“Una, you have-” Timothée points to her face, and she stops walking. Looks at him blankly. Glancing behind him, Timothée stops as well. Comes closer.
“Mascara,” he says. “Here,” Timmy points to his own under eye.

“Oh,” Una says, forgetting that she’s holding up her towel. She reaches up a hand to wipe away the mascara and her towel comes undone, leading her to clutch it to herself ungracefully, trapping it against her stomach before it falls to the floor. Her cheeks burn as she ties the towel around her waist, and they carry on walking, a little way behind everyone else.

Una wipes at her eyes diligently on the way to the pier, and although Timothée looks like he would much rather go up ahead with everyone else, he stays close. A little way in front of her. Protective, almost, although Una wouldn’t go that far.