L IVES
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FELIX HODCROFT
L IVES
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Lives of Lilo Felix Hodcroft
VALLEY PRESS
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FELIX HO DCROFT LIVES OF LILO First published in September 2012 by VALLEY PRESS Woodend, The Crescent, Scarborough, YO11 2PW www.valleypressuk.com ISBN 978 1 908853 13 4 Cat. no. VP0031 Copyright Š Felix Hodcroft 2012 -----------------CREDITS Written by Felix Hodcroft Cover design/typesetting: Jamie McGarry Cover illustration: Jo Reed Copy-editing: Madeleine Hamey-Thomas Language consultant: Ele Lawlor Printing: Imprint Digital Ltd, Exeter Distribution: Central Books Ltd, London Trade sales/promotion: Inpress Ltd, Newcastle -----------------The right of Felix Hodcroft to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. www.valleypressuk.com/authors/felixhodcroft
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for Lotus, Roman, Grace and Auden with love
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1. The first year
‘Pete, love, you fretting again?’ ‘Fine. Really, I’m fine.’ At the beach, under the hot sunshine, Mr Harker was trying to stop fretting; trying to stop his wife from realising he was fretting. He began to read page 17. Again. Fretting about whether he’d still have a job when they got home. So this was supposed to be the summer’s major novel? Please, he thought, please can something – anything – happen! His eyes wandered from blurring page across crowded beach to the shallow water, strewn with lolly sticks and cigarette stubs, where his daughter Sophie was floating on her lilo. Sophie’s lilo was made from rubber and foam, and from air forced into it by Dad’s footpump. Lilo was big enough for an adult to lie on – Sophie had insisted on that because ‘I’m growing fast, Dad, you’ve said that yourself, but I’ll still want a lilo then, won’t I, so...’ Dad had frowned.
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‘So bigger now’ll be cheaper for you then, Dad. You know you hate throwing things away!’ Which he did. When something still had use in it. ‘Get her it, Pete!’ ‘Get me it, Dad!’ ‘Well, don’t start moaning that it’s too big. And listen! Don’t! Let it! Blow away!’ ‘Don’t nag at her, Pete!’ ‘I’m not nagging, I’m just-’ ‘Yes you are-’ ‘No I’m-’ Sophie lay on Lilo and closed her eyes. The sounds of the beach – squabbling adults, screaming children and crying babies – faded away. All she could hear was the waves’ soft thumping beneath her, all she could feel was their gentle up-down-up. She was a princess lounging on a luxury yacht. She was sole survivor of a terrible shipwreck. She was the beautiful mermaid cast adrift on summer currents and washed ashore to dance with the lonely and sick and to heal them. She washot! She dipped her hand into the sea and sprinkled cool water on her baking body. When that didn’t work, she edged herself slowly away from Lilo’s centre until he capsized and dumped her in the sea. Girl overboard! Sophie spat out the water, bitter with salt, sour from its top-film of washed-off suntan lotion. She rubbed her eyes and laughed. Using one hand to keep hold of Lilo, she thrashed the other around, almost swimming. Lilo was better than a friend, because friends sometimes want to play their own games, not yours. Lilo was better
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than a pet, because he never scratched or bit. Even his name was good fun. Lilo lie-low, lie-lee lie-low! Sophie squeezed Lilo, squelchy with the air that Dad had forced into him with the foot pump, chanting as he did so: ‘Don’t ever lie-leave me Lie-lo, lie-lay!’ To which Sophie would sing back ‘At least, not till the sunshine has gone away!’ and turn to her Mum who’d go ‘oh – argh! – gosh!’ ‘Go on Mum, go on!’ ‘Cause if you do go, we’re certainly not going to pay for another bag of rubber and hot air so – hooray!’ ‘Oh Mum!’ ‘Two rules now, Sophie!’ Dad had told her, slapping his hand against Lilo’s fat, bouncy skin. ‘First-’ ‘I know! I know! Don’t go too deep!’ ‘Yes – are you listening, Sophie?’ ‘Don’t get on at her, Pete!’ Mum had said, ‘she’s listening,’ and Dad had glared back. ‘Go on, Dad,’ Sophie had sighed. ‘I’m listening!’ ‘So! Don’t go further than a few feet from shore. And second, don’t leave your lilo in the water when you come back onto the sand. Lilos have minds of their own!’ Silly Dad. That was the best part of Lilo. He wasn’t human so he couldn’t do anything that Sophie didn’t want him to. ‘Squelchy squelchy!’ She squeezed Lilo tight, shivering as she pulled him out of the water. A little bunch of clouds had suddenly blown across the sun and now sand was blowing into her face. Ouch! It stung.
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An empty plastic bottle came rolling and jumping and she trapped it with her bare foot; a newspaper flew past. Some of its pages swooped down, were caught and waterlogged, others span away higher, higher. The people on the beach were making noises – tut twitter tut tut. They were twitching about, hastily pulling on clothes, picking up towels and bags. Hoorah! All the more room for Sophie! Anyway, it was time for an ice cream. Now where was it Mum and Dad were lying today? ‘Sophie!’ Dad was stumbling towards her, waving his arms and shouting. Was he playing one of his jokes on her? He was staring at something behind her; his eyes were bulging. Sophie turned around. Her lilo was flopping and bouncing in the sudden wind. It gave a jump – back into the water. ‘Lilo!’ For a moment, the wind calmed again. As Sophie began to run back towards Lilo, skipping over a sharp splinter of glass on the sand, Dad came scrambling past her. He made a sudden lunge towards where Lilo was. Or rather to where he had been. Just as Dad jumped, the wind rose again and he landed face-first where the water met the sand in a crust of seaweed and ice lolly wrappers. Lilo was turning somersaults, spinning and racing away from the shore. ‘Lilo!’ shouted Sophie again as she reached the water and tried to wade in deeper. ‘Come back, Lilo!’ It seemed stupid to shout – a lilo couldn’t hear her, could it? But he ought to, Sophie thought, he ought to! She kept wading and, far ahead now, Lilo kept flipping and bouncing over the water towards the open sea.
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‘Come back, Lilo!’ whispered Sophie as the water reached her waist and she stopped, remembering she must never go out of her depth. ‘Please come back!’ she whispered, stepping back towards shore and treading on somebody’s hand. Dad’s. ‘Owwww!’ he cried. ‘Please!’ whispered Sophie again, ‘Lilo!’ He was her special friend; he surely couldn’t just disappear? There was a woman swimming in the deeper water. As Lilo span past her, she raised an arm to try and catch him but he darted away on another gust. He rose to a few feet above the sea surface. Then he dropped into the water again and stopped. The wind was dropping. Maybe the tide would wash him back in or Dad could swim out for him? Suddenly, another huge gust sent Lilo spinning towards a yacht moored further out. Sophie screwed up her eyes to see if the yacht would catch him. She saw Lilo strike its side and bounce off, rising even higher than before, turning over and over in the air like a flying acrobat. It was beautiful to see, in a way. Sophie wiped the heel of her hand across her pale blue eyes. She screwed her eyes up tight to watch, and to stop the stupid tears. In a few moments more, she could no longer tell which bit of the deep distant blue was the sea, which was the sky and which was Lilo’s back. Once, she thought she could glimpse a flicker of red, his tummy’s colour. Then, just dazzling blue again. What was the point of ever having anything good if it could just vanish – in an instant – like that? Thank goodness people didn’t. ‘But it all happened so quickly!’ Dad was telling Mum, as
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she squeezed cream out of a bottle and rubbed it onto a big graze on his side, while he pointed to a jagged trickle of blood from his knee. ‘How can people just leave their bloody broken bottles on the – owowouch!’ ‘When did you last have a tetanus jab or a-’ ‘How should I know – five or eight or – how long do they last?’ ‘How should I know how long-’ When they started wittering like this, it was best to just... So Sophie wandered away, screwing up her eyes again, staring into the sky. The brief squall had faded, the clouds had melted. It was hotter even than before. Families who, ten minutes ago, had been scattering from the beach like refugees were now drifting lazily back to their places on the sand, dumping their bags again, peeling off clothes. ‘Daddy!’ a child’s voice was repeating, repeating, ‘Jason hit me! Daddy! Jason hit me! Daddy-’ Pathetic little kids! Sophie sat down on the sand with her hand over her eyes. ‘Don’t be sad!’ Dad called across. ‘Ice cream time!’ called Mum and something in Sophie’s mind clicked. Without even realising it – well, almost without – she’d pulled Mum and Dad back from their boring, boring squabbling. Useful. But to understand how this had worked and when it might again, she’d have to understand how adults’ minds worked. And to do that, she’d need to be the greatest detective‘Sophie, love?’ She smiled for them and wandered back towards the towels, clothes and baskets.
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‘Dad,’ she said, ‘could I...?’ ‘Could you what?’ he smiled, reaching out, touching her with the hand she’d trodden on, then jerking it back – ‘Ouch! Somebody actually dared tread on this, y’know? Who’d dare do that? Must have been somebody really cheeky!’ So he’d feel better, Sophie managed another thin smile. ‘We’ll get you a new one, love!’ said Mum and grinned up at her. ‘Oh, we’ll get you a new one and, yes we’ll pay and it’ll be Sophie’s to keep, yes hooray!’ Silly Dad. Silly Mum. Sophie wasn’t really crying for her own loss now, though that was what had started her tears. And yes, she would like another lilo, soon as possible really, so she could maybe stop thinking about this lilo, because... Because what would become of him? He had been her friend, he’d been her pet, he’d never been without her. If she was him, she’d be frightened. Where was he now and what would happen to him?
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2.
Swept, buffeted by sea and wind, Sophie’s lilo came to a halt far out to sea. The wind had dropped and the sun was going down. The sky was wrapped in streaks of red and purple, orange, gold. They blazed up beautifully, then they faded. Dusk came and then, quickly, darkness. The water heaved and swelled softly and Lilo rose and fell. Every so often, there was a sop-slop as water currents met; or a long, gentle breath of wind. Last night, Lilo had been propped in Sophie’s room between her bed and the half-open window. From outside, footsteps and chatter, laughter and gusts of music had floated in from the village. Then daylight had tiptoed in with sounds of cocks crowing, dogs yapping. Here, though, the night was so silent and lonely. The water kept gently heaving and falling and Lilo bobbed up and bobbed down again. Deep in the hours of night, the swell grew stronger for a while. There came a faint sound, like a distant hum. A large boat was passing a mile or more away. The swell died away again, the hum became quieter and quieter still. At last, silence swallowed it. To Lilo’s east, the sky grew grey, then pink and finally crimson. The sun started to climb in the sky, making a rippling, golden path. Its heat licked up the few fluffs of
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mist. Breezes started to play across the water, turning Lilo this way and that. There came a gentle vibration as a shoal of silver fish, packed tightly beneath the water like a wing, passed at high speed. There were tiny flies and daddy long-legs dancing on the water surface. Plop-plop! A couple of fish mouths barely broke the water, took a gulping mouthful of the insects and, without pausing, swam on. In spite of the sun, there was a dark shape in the west. Too low in the sky to be clouds, moving too fast and growing all the time. It was a huge flock of geese. The flock surged closer, thousands of birds shaped into a huge arrow-head. The geese at the front flapped their wings hard and drove the pack forward. Those behind stroked more slowly through the air, carried forward in the front-runners’ slipstream. After a while, those that had been coasting moved to the front and began to flap harder, while the front-runners fell back and took their turn to be borne forward. As the geese came closer overhead, their cry – a long, loud, sad honk-haaa! honk-haaaaaa! – grew to a great din. Then, as they began to shrink into the distance, the note changed, deepened and slowly faded. A sudden thump-thump-thump; thump-thump; thump! of objects plummeting onto him from the sky shook Lilo and made him rock wildly. But he didn’t overturn. Sophie’s Dad had blown him hard and his wind-packed innards held buoyant and steady. Six straggler geese had fallen behind the rest of the flock, seen this piece of sea flotsam and judged it safe for a
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landing. Now they were scrabbling with their webbed feet and scraping with their claws, trying to keep their balance but also trying not to puncture what they could tell from its feel was not a thick surface. The water smacked Lilo’s sides and the geese struggled and tottered, knocking into each other drunkenly, squawking angrily. At last, the commotion calmed and three of them – whose movements seemed wearier, more uncertain – rested. Each laid its beak over its back and under one wing and grew still. Meanwhile, the others made a series of short zig-zag flights from Lilo. They skimmed the water with their beaks then rose higher. They hovered a few moments to survey the water and then they plunged back down. After a while, a few hundred yards away, one of them began honking loudly. Her three companions changed direction and flew quickly to where she was taking bites from the water. Working together at lightning speed, using the teeth on their tongues, in their jaws, they churned at the water, chewing up a pack of glinting electric-blue fish darting wildly in all directions. The three sick birds stirred and awoke when the hunters swooped down and taxied back in, shedding pieces of fish flesh from their mouths onto Lilo’s back. One of the sick birds reached feebly with his head, started to chew but then stopped. His beak moved a few times, he spread out his wings but then pulled them in again. He tucked his beak back under his wing. One of the other sick birds, though, was already on her second chunk. Her chewing grew stronger, she started to
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spread out and flex her wings. Huh-huh huh-huh, she sighed. The healthy geese trod confidently around their cramped deck, shrieking defiance at the spray. As the sun dropped and night fell, the sickest goose – the one who had tucked his beak away again – grew weaker and weaker. One by one, his fellows wandered up to him, nuzzling him, trying to squeeze gobbets of fish from their beaks into his. But he stirred less and less and, during that night, he died. Now there came a long, sad haah-hurrr! from his comrades. They were silent, almost motionless for a few seconds, then again haah-haah-huuurrrrrr! To the east, the sky grew pale. The great crimson ball was rolling back up bearing morning. Urgently, the geese began their fresh day’s hunt for fish, skidding back to Lilo to spit out and share prey. Paying no heed now to the friend they had mourned, they swooped and trod around him. When the geese flew away later that morning, they were well rested, fish-gorged and strong. One by one, with those who had been sick leading the way, they rose from Lilo, flew around him again and again, as if winding themselves up for the flight ahead. Suddenly, two began to gain height – then four – then all five. With a drawn-out honk-haah honk-haah-haaaaah!, they sped strongly away. At this sprint, they would be able to track and catch their flock within a day. As the sun burned higher, a small haze of flies gathered round Lilo. Some of them picked at the few remaining
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crumbs and threads of fish flesh. Others gathered at the wings and head of the dead goose. The sea was growing choppy, the current drawing Lilo further out to sea. Early in the afternoon, a new swirl of currents – perhaps another boat passing five kilometres away, perhaps a storm a hundred miles off – slapped in, rocking him up and down, this way, that. The dead bird slid slowly from Lilo’s back. There was a short splash. Already, he’d fed flies. Now he was food for the fishes whose brothers and sisters had been food for him and his companions. And at the ocean’s bottom, he would feed worms, shrimps, crabs and tiny plankton who, fat from him, would themselves become food for larger fish. Life, that had burned in and then passed from him, would trickle into thousands of others. While Lilo bobbed and rocked away.
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3.
‘You nincompoop, Roge! Of course, it’s not a whale!’ A boy named Roland was leaning over the rail of the yacht that his Dad had hired and prodding at Lilo with a long pole. Roland’s younger brother poked his head above the yacht’s rail. ‘Yuck, Roly! It’s all covered in stuff! Bird poo and flies and fish scales – push it away!’ Roland poked Lilo away but Lilo nudged back into the slipstream of the slowly moving yacht. He seemed to want to stick to the hull. Again, Roland poked. Again, Lilo fastened himself to the boat’s side, like a little lost dog trotting after a random walker. ‘Dad!’ shouted Roger, ‘Dad! Dad!’ ‘Scaredy cat!’ hissed Roland. ‘Well, fancy that!’ Mr Miller had a fistful of ice cubes in one hand, an almost smoked cigarette in the other. ‘A manky old mattress! Could be fun, boys! Tie it to the stern and bingo! Your own private jolly boat!’ Peering over the rail, he dropped the cigarette butt. It went on burning for a few seconds and Lilo suffered a sharp scorch on his back. ‘It’s a bit cruddy, Dad! Can we get Ahmed to clean it?’ ‘Look, Roly,’ Dad lurched back across the gently swaying deck, unscrewed a bottle, poured some flat tonic into his warm gin and clattered the ice cubes in after it.
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He’d hoped he’d not need to say any more but ‘What, Dad?’ said Roly, ‘what?’ ‘Yes, Dad,’ said Roger, ‘why not?’ ‘Look chaps, Ahmed’s not here as a servant. We can’t keep asking him to do things that aren’t to do with the yacht.’ ‘But it is going to be to do with the yacht if we tie it to the stern, Dad,’ said Roland, who was rather a clever boy – at least in his own eyes. ‘Isn’t it?’ ‘It’s boring here,’ yawned Roger, who was – in everyone’s eyes but his own – rather a whingeing brat. ‘I’d rather be back home with Mum!’ ‘Alright alright alright!’ Dad took a large gulp of his drink. ‘I say, Ahmed!’ he called, ‘I wonder if I could ask you to do a special favour – for the boys, for their fun! – after you’ve prepared the lunch?’ Which was how, an hour or so later, Lilo came to be hauled up on deck and Captain Ahmed to be sponging him down with warm water and detergent. ‘I’ll bet some kid’s missing you!’ Ahmed muttered in his friendly drone and then, a while later, ‘you could do with a bit of a pump-up and all, couldn’t you?’ and, later still, ‘good as new, maybe better except – look! Some clumsy ox has scorched you! Fortunately...’ and he felt with his finger, ‘not burned through, no whizz-hiss-pooof! Lucky lad, aren’t you?’ He wandered back to the ship’s cool hold to re-stash the foot pump. ‘Whizz-hiss-poooooof!’ he chuckled and climbed slowly back up on deck through the blanket of afternoon heat. Then into the cabin. He checked the yacht’s bearings. All fine. Roger, Roland and their Dad were dozing on deck chairs.
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Dad was snoring. Roland was pretending to snore, too, but louder. That made Roger giggle and pretend to snore as well, louder still. Ahmed squatted on the deck and pulled Lilo over. ‘That’s you shiny-shiny and fat again!’ he smiled and slapped his hand down on Lilo, who gave a ripe, bouncy sound. ‘Whawhat?’ groaned Dad, waking for a moment. ‘Sorry, Mr M, sir!’ ‘Don’t need to call me sir...just carry on, Ahm...’ and the rest was lost in another loud snore. Again, Roger pretended to snore. This time, Roland joined in, even louder. ‘Wha-what?’ Mr M tried to pull himself out of his deck chair. Immediately, the boys fell silent. ‘Oh,’ groaned their Dad, ‘just put it – on the bill!’ and fell asleep again. The boys giggled loudly and slapped each others’ arms. Roland bent his head towards Roger’s ear. Roger turned and smirked at Ahmed, but said nothing. When they behaved like this, the boys made Ahmed feel uneasy. He felt they were laughing at him. He muttered under his breath ‘Oh thankyou Ahmed, thankyou, for all the trouble!’ That’s what they might have said. But they hadn’t. True, buffing that mattress up had been about the most satisfying thing he had done today. But it would have been nice to have got some thanks. It would have shown respect. He felt that these boys had no respect for him; or for their father either, so far as he could see. Surely, he thought, you should show respect for those older and wiser, for those who were doing things to enable
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your pleasure? ‘Thankyou thankyou thankyou!’ he said angrily to himself, rising and spitting overboard the piece of gum he’d been chewing. Then he stepped carefully back through the smother of heat into his cabin. Roland and Roger were whispering and giggling again – ‘Yes, he was talking to the stupid lilo thingy.’ ‘The peasant probably thinks it’s alive!’ ‘Shiney-shiney, shiyerny, shiyerny!’ ‘Shh, listen!’ – for again Dad was starting to snore. Again, Roland started the mimicking. Again, Roger responded by snoring even louder... Another golden afternoon was wasting away. Back in the cabin, Ahmed began to slice mint, onion and tomato, knife dancing over the cutting board. Every so often, he glanced across to the yacht’s dashboard and control-panel. All the time, he stayed alert to the soft voices bubbling up on the yacht’s transmitter, other captains in the area. As he did all this, he wondered – was this the most irritating family he had ever helmed around the islands? And he’d known some... As the shadows lengthened, Roland and Roger took turns to frolic on their new lilo toy, now re-moored at the stern of Captain Ahmed’s boat and to jump from it into the cooling water. As the heat needled into their eyes and their brains, though, they more and more squabbled over whose turn it was to jump on and off, over how long each turn should be. The waves began to heave more loudly against the yachtside, over and across Lilo. The spray flew higher and
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the boys screamed louder. They turned the musical din plugging their ears louder and louder while, on deck on his sun lounger, Mr Miller flapped the remote control of the boat’s own sound system, switching his own din louder, sipping his fourth large gin of the day and casting his fishing line to trail limply through the waves. Ahmed pressed cotton wool deeper into his own ears and prepared to steer the boat over the bay to where the water should be calmer. If he pressed the cotton wool much harder, it would, he thought, probably squeeze into his brain and leave him even crazier than he already felt. ‘Mr Roland, Mr Roger, come back on deck, now. We are going to sail over to the bay!’ ‘Why can’t we stay here? Why can’t we move later? Why, Ahmed? Why? Why?’ As the yacht picked its way gently through the swell, its steady whine was drowned out by the thuds, blarts, shrieks and snores emitted by the humans and their music. Seabirds shrieked overhead but, for miles around, shoals of fish scattered as far as possible. This strange babble of vibrations was clearly dangerous. ‘Dad!’ shouted Roger, ‘I’m bored with this and Roly just hit me. I want to go back home to Mum. Can Ahmed make us something to eat?’ Mr M looked irritably at his watch. Only a quarter past five. He was beginning to wish that Roge was indeed back with his Mum – and that Roly was there, too. The sky ahead was thick with blankets of cloud and a gentle rain was beginning. ‘I say, Ahmed...’ he began. Ahmed, able by now – the end of his second day with them – to predict what was coming, cut the engine and began to barbecue the akya fish he had caught earlier.
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While the boys and their father argued about dinner – ‘It stinks!’ ‘Boys, it’s fresh!’ ‘It’s like vomit!’ ‘It’s a luxury out here, Roly, very expensive!’ ‘They can keep it, then!’ ‘Dad, why can’t we go ashore and find some chocolate spread and chips?’ ‘Because we’re on the open sea – at least twenty miles from the nearest village!’ ‘It’s, like, prehistoric out here!’ – Ahmed walked around the yacht checking that everything was in order. As he moved around the stern, Lilo bobbed on his rope and scraped up against the hull. The sea swell faded and a cooling rain fell. Apart from occasional shouts or wails from the boys, the evening was quiet. A small school of slender flying fish came leaping, gliding and swishing. Deeper in the blue seaways, larger fish were circling the boat, aware that, while not food itself, it might provide... They were right. Now Ahmed came to the rail and swept overboard a bowl full of half-eaten bread, part-nibbled fish and almost untouched hummus and salad. Under water, the larger fish started to gather and rise. A lone turtle, swimming slowly past, lunged for mouthfuls of bread and salad, her first food in days. As a swathe of fish cut past her, foraging in seconds the dinner Roly and Roge had picked at for an hour, she fractionally shifted her direction. Aimed precisely for the beach she knew a hundred miles away, where she would lay her eggs in five days time, she had sensed the afternoon’s surges blowing her off course.
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Not any more they weren’t. Swimming slowly, unstoppably on, she began to digest the bread. The next morning was rainy, the afternoon dry but overcast. Now, Roger and Roland rarely climbed onto Lilo and, when they did, they were less interested in what they could do with this lump of rubber, plastic and air, more interested in what they might do to it. They jumped up and down on Lilo. Both climbed on him together and rocked him to and fro, trying to capsize him. They forced him as far under the boat’s hull as they could. They found his air plug and started pulling it out and then jamming it back in before he lost his plump buoyancy. ‘No, Mr M sir, no!’ cried Ahmed, ‘I’ve done the foot pump twice already today. I have the eats to do. Why not they do it themselves this time? Teach them if you damage something, you have to put it right again!’ ‘Oh Ahmed,’ said Dad, unrolling a crisp, uncreased bank note and passing it discreetly across, ‘they’re only boys!’ And Ahmed pocketed the note, pumped up the lilo again but now felt anger at himself as well as resentment of Roger and Roland. Stiff and silent, he rocked up and down on the foot pump. As evening neared, the clouds began to break apart, the sky to glow. Mr Miller gestured with a fresh bottle of gin. ‘Golden day tomorrow, lads, golden day!’ Roly and Roge gave him a brief look, as one might a half-wit, then began battering each other with long sticks of bread. ‘Play fair now, chaps,’ their dad smiled, ‘that’s for our tea!’ ‘My Swiss army knife, right!’ whispered Roly to Roge in their bunks in the silent hold that night.
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‘What about your Swiss army knife?’ ‘If you dropped it blade-first onto precious little shineyshiney... How long do you think it would take for all the air to come out and for it to sink? Would it make a noise – like sssssssssss-fut! ‘ ‘Great!’ hissed Roge. ‘But you’d lose your knife, it’d go under, too!’ ‘Ten seconds, I reckon, before the stupid thing goes under and takes the knife with it. You could jump down and get it in that time!’ ‘Me?!’ squeaked Roger. ‘It’s your knife, you can get it. I’m not getting wet. And it’d be twenty seconds at least!’ ‘Shhh!’ hissed Roland. ‘You’re a little chicken. Little chicken’s scared to get a teeny bit wet. Chuck chuck chuck! Ouch!’ His brother had kicked up at his higher bunk. Now he leant down from it and began to pummel with his pillow. ‘Arghh!’ screamed Roger, ‘stop!’ ‘Boys!’ It was Dad’s voice, shrill and quavering, from the deck, ‘for heaven’s sake, go to sleep!’ ‘Sorry, Daddy!’ Roland called back virtuously, ‘Roge just had a nightmare!’ ‘Oh, bad luck old chap, are you, er, all right now? Do you want me to-’ ‘I’m fine, thank you Daddy! Nighty night,’ cooed Roger and then, lowering his voice to a whisper, ‘alright, I jump down and get your knife. Do I get to keep it?’ ‘You must be joking!’ snorted Roly. ‘You can have it for the day, though! We could do it tomorrow before breakfast – before the old farts can wake up and stop us having fun!’ ‘Old farts?’ ‘Daddy-paddy and Shiney-shiney-man! But have you got
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the guts to? I bet you haven’t!’ Roland stuffed the pillow down again from his bunk into his brother’s face. ‘Now go to sleep! Why’m I so shattered all the time when it’s so boring on this smelly old boat?’ Indeed they had been bored. But the thought of destroying something was making them both feel much less so. Dad was for buying them things. Ahmed was for driving the boat and cooking their food. And Lilo? Now they knew what Lilo was for.