> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://the-handsaw.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Extract from 'Wish You Were Here, Still' - URL: https://the-handsaw.ghost.io/extract-from-wish-you-were-here-still/ - Published: 2026-09-09T23:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-12T13:44:25.000Z - Description: We swam for probably three hours. We went out a few feet deeper than we could stand, treading water, and the waves were colossal, crashing over our heads and sending us tumbling... - Author: Cambridge Writing Centre - Tags: fiction, writing, contributor: Katelyn Smith We swam for probably three hours. We went out a few feet deeper than we could stand, treading water, and the waves were colossal, crashing over our heads and sending us tumbling. The whole world was salt and green and the holding of breath, the water burning our eyes, the sky waving through the wash, beckoning us up to join it, our legs pushing off the floor to bring us back up towards the light. That three feet of travelling between the floor and the surface, I was a seal, smooth and strong, a natural in the water. When my head broke the water, my hair flying back, I knew how the humpback whale felt, thrashing the waves with its spine — ungovernable, eternal. Leo and Amber had hung back on the sands during our swim. Leo’s girlfriend wouldn’t be okay with him swimming with us, and Amber was funny about the way her body looked. ‘I’m all right angles,’ she’d say, ‘all bony.’ In her red bikini, Amber looked like some sort of model, like you’d see her in a magazine at the hairdressers and quickly turn the page before it put you off your lunch. She was slender and tall, with light brown hair and big eyes like a doe. She did give off a deer-like, fickle quality, always ready to run at the first crack of a twig. But she was gentle and kind, and moved with her long arms draped by her sides or folded in front of her, every movement graceful and intentional. She was one of the only true lesbians I knew. The rest of us just kissed who we liked — boys, girls, anyone — without being much fussed by labels. But Amber almost exclusively had a thing for blonde girls, a preference she’d put aside for a few nights earlier in the year when she’d slept with Amy May. It was my birthday party, and they’d gone into the bathroom together while everyone was asleep. It hadn’t worked out between them — one’s capriciousness and the other’s stubbornness bringing it to an inevitable demise — and Amy May was more devastated by that than she’d verbally let on to anyone. But I was not stupid, and nor was Amber. After the shrug, they didn’t speak to each other all night. We sat on the dunes amongst empty bottles and screwed up wet clothes. Seawater had dried on my lips, and I licked off the crystals, tasting rum and suncream and salt. Music was blaring from Mack’s phone as it sat in an empty cup. This rudimentary speaker didn’t amplify it whatsoever, but he’d tried so hard to make it work that we all pretended it did. Our stomachs all had that hollow empty hunger you get after a busy day — the type where you’re hungry but too tired to eat, and the craving for food is almost comforting. It’s like the ache in your muscles after a workout. A gratifying pain, like you’d earned it. A pain that you didn’t dislike because it reminded you that you were alive. Wandering back to my house, Lydia and Leo were a few steps in front, and Amber and Amy May a few behind. ‘They kind of look like siblings, don’t they, those two?’ Mack said, nodding at the duo ahead, his arm steadying me over the berms of beach grass. I pondered upon Mack’s words, before looking back to check whether they were in earshot. ‘They’ll end up together, I think.’ ‘Oh yeah.’ Mack sounded definitive. ‘Yeah, I think so.’ Lydia’s boyfriend was in Bournemouth for uni, and (if you ask me, like Lydia often did) he wasn’t the one for her anyway. He had a particular skill for making her cry whenever she exhibited an ounce of happiness that wasn’t directly correlated to him. At a Halloween party last year he had done exactly that, got high and screamed at her in the garden, over his disdain for our budding friendship with Leo. Leo was false, her boyfriend had said, and was manipulating us with his feminist literature and French jazz. This was long before Leo had become encompassed in our antics and I’d branded him as Lydia’s soulmate. Besides that, Miles had been decent, or as decent as a 19-year-old man could be. He’d even stayed with Lydia after she cheated the first time. The sun was setting over to our left, coating the grass in shadows, and illuminating the sides of my friends up ahead. Lydia said something to make Leo laugh so hard he stopped in his tracks. She turned away from him, looked back, blew me a kiss. --- KATELYN SMITH is a writer and literature student. She specialises in character-driven literature and draws inspiration from the people she spends her life alongside. Fueled by her reading, she is constantly producing, editing, and adapting her work, and wouldn’t be caught dead without a novel somewhere on her person. Follow on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/katesmiii?ref=the-handsaw.ghost.io) & [Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/katesmiii.bsky.social?ref=the-handsaw.ghost.io)