Begin Again | ongoing

twenty-two

It takes them an hour to reach hole seven. There are no more holes-in-one. No more flukes or trick shots. Just a lot of really terrible playing. A lot of out-of-boundary hits. A lot of swearing. Mostly from Sunny, with the occasional cry of fuck! from Viv. A woman walking along the promenade gives them a dirty look but they don't care because the competition is hotting up and there are still eleven holes left to play, if they can make it round the course before it shuts.

"How long did you live here?" Sunny asks as she putts the ball into the seventh hole after only three swings. She's not getting any better, but she does have the occasional bit of luck and the holes aren't arranged by difficulty level so there is respite between the ones that try to trip her up.

"Only a couple of years," Viv says, swinging her hips as she gets into position. "I don't remember it at all but my dad loved it here, so it seemed like the obvious choice when I wanted to move."

"How come you guys left in the first place?"

"My mum died when I was a baby and Dad thought he wanted to stay here but it was all too much after a while." She whacks the ball and sends it flying. It chips the boundary and bounces off. "Fuck."

"I'm sorry," Sunny says. She never knows how to handle other people's grief when she doesn't even know how to handle her own, and she's never sure when or if it's appropriate to ask for the details. The curious gremlin inside her wants to know what happened but she's pretty sure that's not all right.

"It is what it is." Viv shrugs as she collects her ball. "I don't have any memory of her. I couldn't even sit up when she died, let alone form long-term memories." She smiles and holds up the ball and says, "I'm gonna get it in this time."

"If you say so."

It takes her eight more shots.

As they walk to the eighth hole (which is not far; this place is designed for kids), Sunny gravitates towards Viv until they're close enough to bump elbows. Neither of them jerk away. Sunny leans a little closer, and they bump again.

"What about your dad? Is he still in Bristol?"

"No," Viv says on a long sigh, and Sunny dreads what she's about to say next. "He moved back to Naxos once Stella and I had both moved out."

"Where's Naxos?" She tries to pull up a mental map but it's pretty empty, with only the vaguest outline of the continents with occasional pins. She can place Black Sands and London; she has a decent idea of where Australia and New Zealand are and Russia's pretty much impossible to miss, but more than that? Not a chance.

"It's an island in Greece, where he grew up." Viv leans against a low wall that makes up part of the course for the ninth hole and rests her wrists on the handle of her club, which she holds steady between her feet. "I was pretty upset about him moving more than two thousand miles away but he said if we let him go, he'd pay for both of us to fly out and stay with him twice a year."

"Pretty good deal. Is it a nice place?"

"Gorgeous. The sea is turquoise and the beaches are beautiful and it feels so rustic. Everything's so homey. It's a wonderful place and he's so much happier there."

"That's nice," Sunny muses, her mind wandering to pretty beaches and bright blue seas. She salivates at the thought. Though she lives by the sea, it's the cold and grey water of the North Sea. Not quite the same as the Aegean Sea lapping the shores of a Greek island.

"Mmm. Yeah, it is. He left a few years ago and it's been good for him. I don't think he really processed Mum's death until he got out of the country, and that's a long fucking time to have carried all that around with him."