The Rift Rider Read Free

van's ancient speakers. Charlie closed
his eyes, took a breath of the Autumn air and put the love mobile in gear. The
van chugged out of the car park and into the weekend.  
    As he drove
along the winding country roads, the heaters blowing warm air against his
chest, he smiled. Cruising the South Wales roads enveloped in classical music
was one of Charlie's secret pleasures. If his mates knew about it, he would
never hear the end of it. Rugby players listened to rock, not Rachmaninoff.
    Behind him lay
his pride and joy, his custom shaped single fin. He stole a glance at the dark
wooden board, custom made by Otter, the finest shapers in Cornwall. It had cost
him almost a grand, a mammoth chunk of his surf trip savings. But it was worth
it. The board rode like a dream.
    He turned his
eyes back to the road and put his foot down on the accelerator pedal. A wave of
optimism hit him. He just knew in his bones that a great weekend lay ahead and
that despite his initial fears Amy would have some good news for him.
    While he swerved
the van through rolling fields, he hummed along to the music, waving his right
hand out of the window, conducting the cows and sheep he passed on his way to
the Gower Peninsula.

Chapter 2

 
    "It's over,
Charlie," Amy said. She had to raise her voice to compete with the
cacophony of noise inside the Kombi. The indie pop blasting from the van's speakers,
the pasta sauce bubbling away on the stove, the waves crashing outside and the
rain slamming down on the van's roof all combined to make conversation a near
impossibility.
    "What was
that?" Charlie stirred the sauce with one hand and cupped the other around
his ear.
    "I said,"
his girlfriend was screaming now, her brown fringe rocking side to side,
"It's over. I'm breaking up with you."
    Charlie stood at
the stove. The wooden spoon hung limp in his hand. "Why?"
    Amy turned an
ear towards him and pointed at it. She was a pretty, rosy-faced girl, with the
dimensions of a forest elf.
    "Why?"
Charlie shouted.
    She shook her
head, squeezed past Charlie to get to the front seats and switched off the
music. "Let's sit down and talk about this like adults."
    "I'd rather
stand."
    "So be it."
She sat down on the bench beside the stove. The wood creaked with age. She
folded her arms across her chest, and raised her chin, revealing the smooth,
pale, elastic skin of her throat. "I'm moving to Japan on Monday to teach
English."
    "Japan?"
Charlie distantly remembered her saying something about Asia one night. He
thought she had been joking.
    "Yes."
    "This
Monday?"
    "Yes."
    "But what
about me?"
    "Look
Charlie, it was fun while it lasted. But let's be honest, it was never really serious
between us."
    Charlie raised
the spoon, splattering himself in Dolmio pasta sauce. "I thought it was
serious."
    Amy laughed. "Charlie,
nothing in your life is serious." She waved an open palm at Charlie.
"I mean look at you."
    Charlie looked
at his tomato stained shirt.
    "You're
cooking pre-made pasta sauce in a hippy shit heap. That's how serious you
are."
    "What do
you mean shit heap? The love mobile-"
    The girl glared
at him. She had never liked the van's moniker and the connotations it made whenever
she spent an evening inside it.
    "The love
mobile," Charlie continued, "is a classic, a corner stone of German
engineering. Plenty would give their right arm to have one of these sitting in
their driveway."
    "Well,
they're arseholes."
    Charlie stared
at her. Who was this woman? What had happened to his lovely, indie chick
girlfriend? Charlie searched his mind for the right thing to say, trawling
though the half-remembered articles he had read in Marie Claire and
Cosmopolitan while he waited for Amy to get ready. Surely, he thought, there
must be something I can say to bring my sweet Amy back, and banish this cold-hearted
she-devil I see beside me.
    "It's not
the van," she said. "It's you."
    Charlie exhaled
and sat down on the bench next to her.
    She placed a
hand on his thigh and looked up