A Story Up My Sleeve

I'm nervous, which isn't like me. I never usually bother with being nervous. If you've been through what I have, it gives you some very useful perspective. If nerves do start to creep in, I have a surefire way to get them under control: tell a story. That's what I did. I have a belter, and it never fails me.

She was very pretty, the girl I was meeting. I remember thinking, what the hell am I doing?

In my head, I pictured myself talking to her, rolling up my sleeves and showing her the scar... How animated she was, how self deprecating my smile...

Another half moment, and I stepped forward with purpose, right into the heart of the image I conjured.

I managed to introduce myself without making a complete fool of myself.

"I'm just going to get myself a coffee," I say. "Do you want anything?"

I make my way to the counter. It takes a lot of self-discipline to stay focused on the task in front of me, instead of twisting round to make sure that yes she's still there, and yes, she's real.

Once back at the table, I resist the urge to tell my story straight away. Girls don't like a self-absorbed bellend who only wants to talk about himself. Instead I ask her about happy childhood memories. From there, I can ask about places she's been on holiday.

And that is my in. If she hasn't already prompted me to share one of my own memories or holiday destinations, it's not unreasonable to shoe horn it in at this stage.

I can recall the golden sands like it was yesterday. How perfect and blue the waves were. What a match for the sky, with its blazing sun.

We'd gone down to the beach early, before the sun got too high and our flipflops would have been in danger of melting to the road.

Our whole family was there. Me, my parents, my two younger sisters, my mum's sister Margot, and her husband, Troy.

We were there to visit Auntie Margot really, but I idolised Uncle Troy something fierce, even though he was no blood relative to me. He was just really really cool, especially to a nine year old boy.

When we found a snake in the girls' room the week before, he'd calmly put it outside, and assured us it wasn't a venomous one. His hair was fair, and a little bit straggly. The top of his head looked permanently slightly sunburned. The second biggest thing I remember about Uncle Troy was he was the kind of man who woke up with a smile nailed in place, and it never slipped, no matter what happened.

It was the third week of our trip, and jet lag felt like a distant memory. Uncle Roy had been teaching me to surf, and I'd been absolutely desperate to acquit myself in his eyes. I spent a lot of time in the sea. The salt and sun had bleached my brown hair til it resembled his, which pleased me enormously.

The shark swimming closer to me was unreal, like something out of a dream. I think I hung there in the water, suspended, my skinny brown legs dangling like so much chum. There was a roaring in my ears, which might have been the waves, or my family screaming in panic, or my own blood rushing and rushing.

It really was like a nightmare, the water seemed to have turned to treacle and I couldn't make my arms and legs go.

The shark, on the other hand, cut through the water with near supernatural speed. Goddamn their mouths are big. They have more teeth than you can imagine. I thought, this is it. I'm going to die.

My body was finally cooperating, and I made to swim to shore, but it was too late. That enormous mouth bore down on me. I tried to remember what you're supposed to do, are you supposed to punch it on the nose? Then there was blood all around me, like my panic coloured in the ocean.

Uncle Troy was larger than life. He cut through the water quite as quick as the shark had, and he towed me to shore almost before I realised what had happened. My arm, my shoulder felt like it was on fire, and there was so much blood....

Lying there on the sand, it was all sticking to my wet suit, and my mum's screams were hitting me from a long way away, like they came through a really long tunnel...

The jangled bits and pieces of my confusion and shock coalesced, there on the sand under all that wailing.

My arm was gone.

Mum's cries swallowed me up as much as the shark had, and I watched the whole scene unfold in front of me from the tunnel that was her throat.

Uncle Troy had dived back into the water and aimed straight for my nemesis, like a crazy person. He towed it to the beach, just like he'd towed me. The shark did get punched, then. Uncle Troy reached into that maw and plucked my missing arm from all those rows of razor sharp teeth.

"Your boy will be needing that, Anya," he said.

They couldn't turn a maneater loose in the sea right by the beach. I'm not sure, but I think somebody shot it. That's what they said after, anyway. I was never certain if that was true, or if they just said it to make me feel better somehow.

Somebody brought ice (a lot of ice) from the beach restaurant, who let us have it for free. My arm bled gently on a big pile of it, and when the ambulance arrived, we travelled together, my wayward limb and I.

Shock and pain were still hitting me in waves. As an amateur surfer just starting out, I knew just how hard and fast waves could batter you. In between slamming bouts of pain, I was dizzied by churning hits of shock. Dazed, struck dumb by the enormity of what happened, and struck anew by the complete weirdness of it all.

A very clever surgeon reattached my arm (I showed the pretty girl my scar) and everything works just fine, look (I flex my fingers to prove it).

Her eyes and mouth are round Os of amazement.

I tell her I was still nervous, meeting someone as beautiful as her. She is very gratified by this. I swig my coffee and send a silent thank you back across the years to a probably dead shark.

Poor bugger. His only crime was trying to eat me.