The Blade Artist

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As he elevates her skywards, the bright sun seems to burst out from behind Eve’s head, offering Jim Francis a transcendental moment that he pauses to savour before he lowers the child. The hot sand will soon punish his bare feet, he thinks, turning away from the solar flare, and he’ll have to watch she doesn’t burn. Eve is fine for now though, her bubbling, machine-gun giggles urging him to continue the game.

The glorious thing about working for yourself, setting your own hours, is that you can always take time off. Jim appreciates being here on the deserted beach, so early at sunrise this July morning, with his wife and two young daughters, while everybody else sleeps off their Independence Day celebration hangovers. The beach is absolutely deserted, bar some squawking seabirds.

When he’d first moved to California, they’d stayed in Melanie’s two-bedroomed apartment in the small college town of Isla Vista, close to where she worked at the university campus. Jim loved the closeness to the ocean, and they’d regularly walk the coastal trail, from Goleta Point to Devereux Slough, sometimes only seeing the odd beachcomber or surfer. When first Grace then Eve had come along, they’d moved to a house in Santa Barbara, and the treks were curtailed in favour of shorter jaunts.

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