SUNK

by Fleur Hitchcock

  ‘And the mining in the castle with all the strange lights –’

  ‘Dad,’ I interrupt. ‘I think it’s our turn.’

  I practically shove my parents towards Mr Bell’s desk, which is far too small for him. There’s some jostling while we all cram around it, feeling uncomfortable and generally being too big.

  ‘Tom,’ says Mr Bell, holding his fingers together in a considered and intelligent way. ‘Tom, Tom, Tom. Lovely Tom.’

  I can see by the cardigan and cravat that Mr Bell is still in his ‘sensitive’ phase.

  ‘Tom.’ He breathes in slowly and exhales noisily. I wonder if for some awful moment he’s forgotten who I am.

  There’s a long hideous silence in which we hear all the other parents and teachers chatting away.

  ‘Marvellous,’ he says in the end. ‘Marvellous.’

  ‘So glad, Graham,’ says Dad.

  Graham?!?

  No one calls a teacher by their first name. That is simply forbidden. Isn’t it?

  Mr Bell smiles back at Dad. I’m not sure he smiles with his eyes though.

  ‘So.’ Mr Bell shuffles through the notes on the table. ‘This term we’ve been doing empathy …’ Mum makes approving noises. ‘I think it’s very important,’ says Mr Bell, doing the hands thing again. ‘It’s part of making a strong community.’

  ‘Absolutely, Graham, couldn’t agree more,’ says Dad, puppy-like.

  ‘Yes,’ says Mr Bell, looking confused.

  I notice Tilly fiddling with the overhead projector nearby.

  ‘So what should we be doing to encourage empathy in Tom?’ asks Mum.

  A picture of Mum and Dad’s Alice in Wonderland-themed wedding comes on the screen. Dad dressed as the white rabbit, Mum as the dormouse. One person giggles.

  ‘Well,’ says Mr Bell, ‘I don’t know. Empathy is of course important, but so is art – and, er – physics.’

  Next, a baby picture of Dad dribbling, followed by a shot of Mum aged two, sitting naked on a bucket.

  Another giggle.

  ‘I’m concerned that Tom may be wasting what is obviously a very important talent.’

  A silent film of Mum dancing in an overly tight golden-sequinned body stocking cuts quickly to a video. There’s sound too.

  This time everyone stares at the screen. It’s been filmed in the bathroom really recently. I can tell because most of Dad’s hair has gone. The camera seems to be in the mirror. He’s facing it and first he blows himself a kiss.

  Everyone in the hall laughs. Except Mum and Dad.

  Next, he practises the ‘yo’ hands. Doing things with fingers splayed in a V, and shuffling his shoulders. He does jazz hands at the mirror, and sings loudly. Then he tries to rap.

  I bury my face in my hands, and a huge roar goes up. I have to know what’s going on so I peer between my fingers to see the screen cut to another video, this one downloaded from the Internet. It’s Mum, microphone in hand, singing: ‘I’m walking on sunshine – ooh – oooooooh …’ It’s flat. It’s awful. It’s the Christmas karaoke that they did in the privacy of the sitting room. Tilly must have filmed it.

  It goes on.

  Two seconds of Mum practising Spanish verbs.

  Three seconds of Dad swearing at a flat tyre.

  A shot of Dad’s favourite tracks on his iPod. They’re all terrible.

  I stare at Tilly. She’s got the biggest smile on her face.

  A photo of Mum’s giant purple running pants.

  A picture of Dad wearing the chef’s trousers in the playground at school.

  And finally a photo of Dad aged about seven, standing on stage dressed as a donkey.

  I die.

  16

  Walking on Sunshine

  ‘I don’t know how you could do such a thing,’ barks Mum, marching Tilly back to the car.

  Tilly doesn’t speak. She can’t wipe the smile off her face and I’m wondering whether when I kill her, I’ll bother to hide the evidence.

  She scratches her head and turns to stare out of the window, but I can still see the reflection of her smile.

  We drive home in silence and, suitably, it begins to rain, driving a fine sea mist over the windscreen and merging low cloud with the oncoming night.

  I lie awake for hours that night thinking dark thoughts about Tilly, deckchairs, parasols, Mr Fogg and then even darker thoughts about Tilly.

  I sleep badly, waiting for the awfulness of morning. On balance I’d rather deal with violent deckchairs than public humiliation.

  ‘So – Mumsy-wumsy’s a singer, is she, Tom?’ says Jacob before I’ve even taken my place on the bus.

  I stare rigidly through the window.

  ‘And Daddy too,’ he says, and then he breaks into song: ‘I’m walking oooooooon sunshshshshshineeeee – ooooooh – ooohhhh …’

  Belt up, Jacob, I think. But I don’t say anything.

  Dad’s quiet this morning too.

  Tilly’s talking in a loud voice to her friend, Milly. ‘Well, I thought why should I have to suffer? It’s their fault, they can suffer.’

  ‘But it’s not really Tom’s fault,’ says Milly. ‘And it must be horrible for him.’

  For the first time ever I feel something vaguely warm towards Tilly’s best friend.

  Eric glances over the top of Extra Physics for Lively Youngsters. ‘Sorry, Tom,’ he says. ‘It was funny though.’

  I don’t reply. I feel completely betrayed.

  It gets worse.

  ‘Had a good time in the bathroom, Mr Perks?’ says someone.

  ‘Are we going to have a singing mayor?’ asks another.

  Mr Bell doesn’t mention it all the way through ICT, until we get to the very end.

  ‘So, as Tom’s parents’ illustrated so well last night, we do all need to be very careful what we put on the Internet. It can come back to haunt us.’ He beams at me and I try really hard not to run out of the room screaming.

  I walk home, which takes ages, and Eric walks with me because he’s essentially empathetic.

  Jacob comes too. He’s not empathetic. He’s curious and he can’t resist bringing up last night’s humiliation at every turn.

  ‘Walking on sunshine … oo-ooooh! How does it go, Tom?’ says Jacob. ‘What’s the next bit?’

  The rain is slightly less than torrential and slightly more than drizzle.

  ‘Yo – Tom,’ Jacob says. ‘Yo! LOL – yo! Or is it both bits at once? Like … YOLO! Isn’t that what your dad says?’

  We splat through puddles and around the ancient overflowing gutters and drains of the town.

  ‘So, Model Village, how does it feel to have such idiots as parents?’

  ‘Don’t,’ says Eric quietly behind me.

  ‘Why not?’ says Jacob.

  ‘Because it’s unkind,’ says Eric.

  ‘Oh!’ says Jacob. As if he’s surprised by the news.

  I’m so obsessed by the whole Tilly public-humiliation thing that I’ve forgotten all about the beach.

  Skirting the front of the castle we get a view over the sea. A tiny group of people are huddling under an umbrella. ‘Who’s that?’ says Jacob. ‘What are they doing?’

  We cut down across the castle green. It’s soggy – boggy actually – and my school shoes are not built for it – so now I’m wet from the top down and the bottom up.

  We stop by the pier and look at the beach. No one’s lolling around on deckchairs, but Mr Fogg’s there in his full yellow sea-going gear. Also, the mayor in a skimpy cagoule, and a couple of reporters. Next to them a white pedalo lies on the sand with two quivering girls shivering next to it.

  The mayor’s children. They don’t go to our school, but I recognise them. They’re about our age.

  The rain beating on my hood means that I can’t hear anything, so I drop down the steps to the sheltered patch of beach under the pier, and take off my hood.

  Over the scrunching sound of Jacob’s feet on the sand I can just about hear the conversation.


  ‘… so I have absolute faith in the beach, proven by my willingness to put my own children, my very own flesh and blood, in one of our 100% safe Bywater-by-Sea pedalos. They’ll be out on the sea every day of the summer season …’

  Mr Fogg nods in agreement, although he looks slightly less happy than the mayor.

  ‘He’s not sending them out in this – is he?’ says Eric, indicating the rain that has now moved on to torrential. ‘They’ll drown.’

  ‘That would be interesting,’ says Jacob.

  We watch the two girls clamber into the pedalo and Albert Fogg push them towards the sea. The journalists are frantically snapping away and I’m wondering if we shouldn’t run to the rescue when a wave breaks over the front of the pedalo. The first girl leaps out of the boat and rushes back to the sand, shortly followed by the other.

  The mayor argues with them, but they shake their heads in fury and stomp up the beach.

  ‘Phew,’ says Eric.

  ‘Pity,’ says Jacob.

  The next day is sunny, actually warm, and most people run around outside.

  ‘Art Club?’ says Mrs Mawes.

  ‘Um,’ I say.

  It turns out that Art Club is exactly what I feared. An hour of free time wrecked by cutting and sticking. Tilly’s there, with Milly and a bunch of friends.

  I am the only boy over the age of seven.

  ‘Now, Tom – winner of the Sculpture on the Beach contest – I’m sure you don’t need any help from me. Here are some materials, let’s see what you can do.’

  I stare dumbly at the pots of glue, paint and glitter, and wonder if life can actually get worse.

  17

  It Takes Twenty-three Coins

  When I get home I go up to my bedroom. Some kind of hurricane must have hit it. And then I decide it must be a rabid dog. Or rats. Or a giant squirrel. Chunks of my duvet are missing. My pillow has a hole burrowed right through it. The lampshade is dangling, tattered and torn, and the window, which I closed before I left this morning, has a broken pane of glass.

  ‘What?’ I say aloud.

  At first I think it must be something that’s come in from the outside. An invasion of giant hornets – or birds, or radioactive snakes.

  Then I remember the deckchairs.

  Frantically I search out the pirate tin. I find it under my bed. It’s been torn open from the inside, the metal lid curled back and savaged like a sardine tin. There are no deckchairs inside.

  In fact, there are no deckchairs anywhere to be seen. I imagine them marauding and pillaging. Three vicious mousetraps pinching and snapping and tearing. I wonder what kind of damage they’d do.

  It would look very much like this.

  Eric’s dad opens the door. I rush past and race up the stairs to find Eric playing himself at chess.

  ‘What?’ he says.

  ‘The deckchairs,’ I say, and I explain what’s happened.

  ‘Oh, Tom,’ he says. He refrains from saying ‘You idiot’, but I know that’s what he means.

  ‘So I’ve no idea where they are,’ I say. ‘We need to find them before they get any bigger.’

  ‘How big do you suppose they are now?’ he asks.

  I hold my hands out, measuring imaginary tiny deckchairs. ‘I guess they must be about a credit-card big.’

  ‘Really easy to find then,’ he says. ‘In a whole town.’

  We start in the model village. I know if I was a miniature deckchair that’s exactly where I’d hide and I check for the first one I left by the cricket green. It’s not there any more. There’s no sign of it, not even any damage, and there’s no sign of the small ones either. Next, we try the crazy golf. I check all the holes. Eric checks all the Dingly Dell gnomes.

  There are no actual deckchairs but something’s taken a bite out of one or two of the greens.

  ‘They’ve been here,’ I say.

  ‘But they’re not here any more,’ says Eric.

  We drop down to the sea wall.

  Today the sea is glassy and families have come out to enjoy the end of the afternoon sun. The mayor’s daughters are pedalling back and forth across the bay. Everything looks calm and lovely.

  I lean on the railings and study the beach. ‘I suppose they might have tried to get home,’ I say.

  ‘Where is home?’ says Eric.

  ‘In a sort of cave at the end of the beach,’ I say, a sudden thought coming to me. ‘Do you suppose there’s nothing actually wrong with the beach itself?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asks Eric, catching a wild curl of hair and jamming it under the hook of his glasses.

  ‘Well, I know everything that’s happened so far has been on the beach, and we assumed that it must be the sand or the sea or something. But supposing it isn’t?’

  Eric rubs his chin in a thinking way. ‘Where’s the cave?’ he says in the end.

  There are masses of people on the beach. We’re weaving our way through the family encampments when a shriek comes from above us on the sea wall.

  ‘AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGH!’ It’s about four million decibels and it comes from a woman and her daughter who race straight down the steps onto the sand and hop about as if they’ve been stung by something.

  ‘Get off!’ screams the girl. ‘Beastly thing!’

  The mother stares in horror at her daughter and we run over. The child has a smallish deckchair clamped to her piggy nose, much like a large peg. ‘Ow! Ow!’ squeals the girl.

  ‘Stay still,’ says her mother, sticking her fingers into the deckchair and pulling.

  ‘OW! It hurts!’ The girl can’t stay still and the mother can’t get it off.

  ‘Try this,’ says Eric, pulling his Field Craft penknife from his pocket. ‘We might be able to force it open.’ He jams it into the deckchair mechanism and, oyster-like, forces it open.

  ‘Help!’ comes a shout from above us on the sea wall.

  ‘Go,’ Eric says to me, his fingers dangerously close to the deckchair’s snapping jaws. ‘We’re good here.’

  ‘Help!’

  The cries seem to be coming from the amusement arcade. Amongst all the flashing lights and gurgling games, the owner is standing with his back to the wall, his eyes fixed on the dark space under the machines. I move closer but it’s not the space under the machines where the problem lies, it’s inside the machine. I press my nose to the glass and see two tiny deckchairs having fun dancing in the tuppence waterfall. They’re kicking the coins off the ledges and snip-snapping at the prizes, while the bigger one – the one Eric put under the microscope – is dancing inside the claw machine and throwing itself at the cuddly toys.

  I could shrink them, but what good would that do? They’d still be inside the machines, still capable of pinching and biting. I need to get them out.

  I rush to the change machine, stuff a pound coin in the top and it spews 2ps into a plastic tub at the bottom. I grab another plastic tub and stick it underneath the machine and then start feeding the coins into the top of the machine. It takes twenty-three coins to get the first cascade, and twelve to get the next, and on the third one of the deckchairs that was teetering on the edge slips over and shoots down into the tub. Before it can even stand up I grab another tub and jam it inside, pinning the chair to the bottom of the first tub.

  Eric appears beside me, his hands clasped together, real tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. ‘This thing’s vicious,’ he says, gasping.

  ‘Quick,’ I say, picking up another tub, ‘drop it in here. It’ll work for a few minutes.’

  Once we have both the chairs imprisoned we feed more 2ps into the machine. The last tiny deckchair is dancing and leaping and kicking the coins around inside. It seems oblivious to the disappearance of its companion. Just as the man who runs the amusement arcade seems totally ignorant of what has really happened and is still thumping a broom around underneath the machines. He obviously thinks he’s looking for an insect.

  It takes two more pounds to catch the last deckchair, which t
umbles into the tub in a shower of coins, and we jam it under the other two. Then I hold all three together in a quivering sandwich.

  ‘Now that one,’ I say, pointing to the claw machine.

  The slightly larger chair has fastened itself round a fluffy dragon and is squeezing hard.

  ‘Those things are impossible,’ says Eric. ‘They never work.’

  ‘Hold this.’ I hand him the pile of twitching tubs and grab another pound coin from my pocket.

  ‘Have you only got one left?’ asks Eric.

  I nod, slot the pound coin in and focus on the claw controls.

  ‘Are you any good at this?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes,’ I lie.

  I’ve never actually managed to get anything before, but the deckchair has released the dragon and is flipping around inside the machine and the moment I lower the claw it clamps on to one of the open jaws.

  ‘Quick,’ says Eric.

  Holding my breath I raise the claw and steer it over the tray.

  It dangles there, still inside the machine, swinging and snapping.

  ‘Give it a shove,’ I say.

  Eric thumps the machine, and the chair sways, swings and gives up its hold. It falls, wriggling and squeaking, until it wedges itself in the slot.

  I grab it, pinching it shut while it flexes and squeals.

  I feel 88% good, because I’m 12% worried about what to do with it next.

  We step out of the arcade. ‘Now what?’ says Eric. ‘We can’t drown them – they’ll float.’

  ‘No – and I can’t shrink them either, there’s no point.’

  ‘Jacob,’ we say to each other at the same time.

  18

  Kind of Cute

  Going begging to Jacob doesn’t come naturally.

  ‘Do you mean you need me?’ he says, standing in his front doorway in pants and a vest, rubbing his enormous stomach.