Ghosting Home (Strong Winds Trilogy)

by Julia Jones

  “Sensitive, seldom and sad are we,” they shouted, as they leapt up and down in their mud and rushes. “By the desolate shores of the silent sea.”

  “Oh so seldom and sad / So sensitive, seldom and sad!”

  The yachts that had anchored during the day had left and no other boats had arrived. If there had been any ramblers or birdwatchers they too had gone home. Stone Point was completely deserted. They could be as wild as they liked.

  But not stupid or irresponsible. Donny was sure that they’d trodden the fire out before they went to bed. And tipped water on the ashes.

  So why was he smelling smoke?

  He’d no idea what time it was. Not morning yet. Not even dawn. The tent he shared with Luke and Liam was a mess and he wasn’t sure that he could find his posh watch without waking them.

  He needed to investigate. He knew he didn’t want to.

  The wind had eased off but the cloud cover was low. When Donny crawled reluctantly outside he found that the night was very black. It took a while before he sorted out his sense of direction and stumbled away from the tents until he stubbed his toe on the stones beside the barbecue. The ashes were completely cold. Not a flicker of heat, let alone smoke or flame.

  “Er ... hello?”

  There wasn’t any answer. He didn’t know why he’d expected one. He crept carefully back to the tents feeling puzzled and uneasy.

  The smell of smoke refused to leave.

  Donny snuggled back into his sleeping bag, trying to recapture lost warmth. He imagined himself in his bunk on board Strong Winds and Gold Dragon in her cockpit, puffing her pipe beneath the hidden stars. A thin blue-ish ribbon of fisherman’s friend trickling downwards into the cabin. How good would that have been!

  But this smoke was cigarette smoke and he’d crawled through it in the space between the doorways of the tents. As if someone had left it hanging there.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Signals or Trophies?

  Walton Backwaters, Monday 28 May 2007

  It must have been his mum who’d been smoking outside the tents. Donny knew that Skye had sometimes shared an evening pipe with Great Aunt Ellen, especially when she was recovering from her alcohol addiction, but he was shocked to discover that she was smoking cigarettes.

  Maybe it wasn’t Skye. Maybe it was Anna. After all the health warnings they’d had at school! He had heard that teenage girls were more at risk than boys. She drank coffee now and he supposed she might have been under a bit of stress with all that extra studying. All the same it wasn’t right and he’d have to speak to her about it. Though since when had Anna ever taken any notice of anything he said?

  Because if it wasn’t Skye or Anna, who was it?

  Donny fell asleep feeling gloomy and woke late with a headache. He scrambled out of the hollow not seeing much and walked up the beach. Anna, Luke and Liam were heading back. Liam was whirling a spade. They’d eaten their breakfasts ages ago and caught the early morning appearance of the magical sand.

  “That was well fun! Anna was chief engineer and me ’n’ Luke digged. We digged a whole system and when the water came back it fairly rushed into our reservoir. It filled right up. But then it carried on and flooded. So we watched for a bit more and then we came back.”

  “It was chasing us!” said Luke. “Snapping at our heels and Liam saw two crabs.”

  “They was massive! And Anna says we can do it again tomorrow and if you get out of bed we can do it much bigger.”

  “We did try but you was sort of muttering and then you punched the pillow.”

  “An’ then you started snoring.”

  “Louder ’n the fog signals off Low’stoft pier!”

  The brothers looked at one another. But it was okay. They could say Lowestoft without bad feelings.

  “Have you been smoking?” Donny asked Anna who was standing with them, looking windswept, flushed and happy.

  They’d all been on the sand without him. Having fun and making jokes while he’d been kept awake with worry.

  “I so have not,” she flashed back. “Don’t you know what’s in those things? There’s benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde ...”

  “... and hydrogen cyanide. I went to the workshop too, you know. So it must have been Mum. She can’t read the warnings. I’ll have to search her tent.”

  “Someone’s crawled out of the wrong end of his sleeping bag! We know where everything is in our tent because we keep it tidy and I’m certain Skye doesn’t have cigarettes. So why don’t you shut up and get yourself a cup of tea? Skye and Vicky were heading back to camp to put the kettle on and I need us to make plans. Xanthe and Maggi might arrive this evening and then we have to decide whether we’re going home. I mean, the weather’s not too great and we’d have to get more stores but the kids have got so many things they want to do that maybe we ought to think about extending?”

  “We’re going to dig a huge pit and cover it with wood and trap people. Or mammoths.”

  “No, we ain’t. We’re going to dig a huge pit and make it into our special den. And invite our Treasure to tea.”

  “If we haven’t caught any mammoths we won’t have no tea to give her.”

  “But if we ain’t got a den we can’t ask anyone round anyhow.”

  Luke and Liam were glaring at one another. Anna’s cup of tea suddenly seemed like a good idea. Especially if there was any breakfast left. Or even a packet of biscuits. He could tackle Skye about her smoking later. Maybe she’d picked up the habit when she was in Holland. Maybe his uncle smoked? He hadn’t looked the type but how could you tell?

  Because if it wasn’t Anna or Skye, who else could it have been?

  “We could dig two big holes,” he suggested. “One for living and the other for trapping. And if we gathered a load more wood we could maybe have a really good bonfire when Xanthe and Maggi come. Cook our supper on it, if no-one else turns up.”

  “We’ll fight ’em off,” said Luke.

  “’Cos we’ve been here first,” his brother agreed.

  Donny and Anna had read the local sailing club notices near the barbecue site and knew about the permission process but they didn’t bother saying anything. It had been great having this place completely to themselves: they couldn’t really expect it would continue. It was half-term after all. Surely other families would soon be arriving?

  Donny didn’t have time to waste on tea. He sent Luke and Liam to the camp to fetch apples, biscuits and a water bottle, then settled down to dig.

  “Know something, Anna?” he said later. He stretched his back. This digging was tough work. “The barometer on that mega-watch you gave me shows that the pressure’s fallen by almost ten millibars.”

  “Since when?”

  “Er, since I last checked it.”

  “Which was ...?”

  “Last night? No, yesterday evening. I mean afternoon. When we got back in Vexilla.”

  “So what does falling ten millibars mean? How normal is it?”

  “Dunno exactly. I should have been checking every few hours. Then if you notice a sharp fall or rise in a short space of time you know that there’s bad weather coming.”

  “Also I noticed that it’s been flooding for ages and the only boats that have come past have gone straight on up the river. No-one’s stopping here. Maybe they know something we don’t?”

  “Maybe.”

  Donny looked out to sea. The on-shore wind, which had dropped in that black time of the night, had been rising steadily all morning and seemed to be changing direction. Low flat clouds were building to the north-east.

  “Have you got your mobile?”

  “It’s in the tent.”

  “Let’s ring Weathercall. Luke, Liam, we’re going to take a quick break in the camp. Have a drink. See whether Skye wants help with lunch?”

  The younger boys didn’t take much persuading. They’d been digging their great pits with intense concentration and the word lunch made them realise how hungry they were.

/>   “What were they doing anyway?”

  “Who?”

  “Mum and Vicky. I haven’t seen them all morning. I know I woke up late but I thought you said they were heading back to the camp but I never spotted them.”

  “Not sure. Skye was making patterns when we were out on the sand. She was collecting shells and pieces of wrack then finding places where there were worm casts or sand ripples and laying them down in sort of intersecting curves, like knobbly weaving. Vicky was fetching things for her. Round the other side, towards the Naze. They’re probably still doing it. Or they’re back at the camp.”

  But they weren’t.

  Luke and Liam demanded two large slabs of chocolate then agreed to find Skye and ask about lunch while the others rang Weathercall.

  Anna’s mobile had been left switched on all night and the battery was completely gone. Then the boys raced back to say that Skye and Vicky weren’t Anywhere.

  “They must be. One big lady, shawls and braids, tendency to wave arms around: one small lady, red hair, no nappies, tendency to shout and throw things. You probably missed them in the crowd.”

  “Go look for yourself.”

  There wasn’t anywhere much to look but he couldn’t find them. The tide was high so there wasn’t much beach between the water and the dunes. Skye’s artworks would have been washed away. He couldn’t believe that she and Vicky had been washed away as well. Anna ran to check the boat but Vexilla was lying sweetly to her anchor about five metres out into the channel. The rope they used to haul her in was as they had left it. They could see there was no-one on board.

  That meant they needed to look again. Everywhere.

  First, the beach on the seaward side. Anna fetched her new binoculars but they weren’t necessary. Everyone could look along its narrow, empty length. Grey waves were breaking against the tide-line, almost bursting through the low dunes, but there was not so much as a dog-walker in sight, the entire distance to the Naze cliffs. Even the seabirds had flown elsewhere. The high streaks of hurrying cloud were getting lower and thicker but visibility was still good. They could see that there was nobody walking the raised seawalls that crossed the marshes. They knew there was no-one on the steep foreshore by the channel because that was where they had been.

  Which left the entire complex of deep dykes, small creeks and swampy islands plus a small lagoon. All full of water now.

  Suddenly they were certain there had been a terrible accident – it only took a few inches to drown a toddler, they all knew that.

  Skye, absorbed in her pattern-making. Deaf. Vicky wandering away, tumbling into the steep dyke, struggling, terrified, drowning. Then Skye ... missing Vicky, searching for her ... unable to call out clearly or hear a cry for help.

  Anna began to shake. Her teeth chattered. “I sh-should n-never ...”

  “Our Treasure!”

  Donny forced himself to breathe carefully, speak calmly.

  “We’ll start from the exact spot where you last saw them, Anna. Can you take us there? As near as you can.”

  She swallowed hard and nodded. They walked back without speaking to the seaward side where the sands had vanished beneath the water. No-one hurried or called out.

  In part of Donny’s mind he was wondering how to get the news to Lottie. He scanned the desolate scene wildly hoping for help. Adults! Anywhere?

  He stubbed his toe, painfully, on a large pile of rocks. Huh? How could they have missed this lot when they’d been struggling to find sufficient heavy weights to secure all their guy ropes?

  Such an unworthy thought to think at such a time.

  Except ... his toe really hurt. It felt broken. He’d skinned his ankle too. They couldn’t not have seen such a jagged heap.

  Especially as this pile of stones had a stick protruding from the top and the stick was flying two coloured ribbons: one a deep crimson and the other, buttercup yellow.

  Signals or ... trophies? Suddenly he remembered that smell of smoke. Who could have tracked them to these Desolate Shores? He’d felt so safe.

  “Over here – quick!”

  They were slow, at first. Then they came running.

  “Footprints,” said Luke. His eyes were huge, his breathing rapid. “On a desert island you get footprints!”

  “You won’t get any here, this sand’s way too dry.”

  “We ought to be lookin’ for ’em,” said Liam, instantly siding with his brother.

  That’s those Crusoe stories I’ve been making up, thought Donny.

  “And grab them ribbons. Skye and Vicky might be captives!”

  “Like whose?” Anna’s face was pink with delight. You’d think she might be about to dance. “They’re having a game with us. How idiotic do I feel! Hel-lo, you can come out now!”

  There wasn’t any answer. Donny didn’t bother mentioning that Skye wouldn’t hear her shouting and Vicky’s language skills were still pretty basic. He hadn’t told Anna about the smoke. She couldn’t know that there had been someone in their campsite as well as them. He glanced round desperately. If Flint or the Tiger were here, there would surely be a boat? They would have had to overpower Skye to make her go on board. She was strong. She would have fought.

  Unless they’d threatened Vicky ...

  Anna untied the ribbons, carefully, and stood beside the stones waving them.

  Luke and Liam were casting around – Luke had slipped into tracker-dog mode, and Liam had armed himself with a musketshaped piece of driftwood and kept dropping to one knee to take careful aim at suspicious clumps of marram grass.

  Donny stayed where he was, trying to be rational. The word ‘cairn’ had come into his head but it wasn’t a word he thought he knew. Had Granny Edith used it once when she’d taken him and Skye to the Pennines? He remembered when they’d walked and walked in the clear light until they could see right across the other side of the hills to the distant blue haze of Morecambe Bay.

  Donny knelt down on the beach. Slowly, stone by stone, he began to dismantle the cairn.

  Rotterdam, Monday 28 May 2007

  There was an argument going on among the people who were being hustled out of the back on an anonymous truck and into a shipping container. It was a hopeless argument from people who didn’t like what they were being ordered to do: who felt cheated and frightened; against people who knew that what they were doing was wrong but were going to do it anyway and knew that the other people had no choice but to submit.

  “But I have paid 60,000 yuan,” one man said. “I had expected I would be going by air.”

  “Why are there so many of us all going together? I’ve been waiting for weeks. Surely it’s safer to go in small numbers?”

  “Why must we be put into crates? Surely we can move around on the journey?”

  “It’s for your safety. The crossing is not long but it’s sometimes rough. There’s heavy furniture packed in here. It could shift.”

  “If you want to come to England, get a good job, this is what you have to do.”

  “If you don’t like it you stay here. Beg in the streets. We won’t help you anymore.”

  “You have no passport. You have no work permit. You’ll soon be picked up and sent home and who’s going to help your family then?”

  The snakeheads punched and kicked the loudest grumblers: grabbed others by their clothing and manhandled them into the crates. Most of the travellers were resigned. They knew they had no choice. And it wasn’t so much further now.

  Min said nothing at all. For the rest of his life he would remember the sound of the electric screwdriver fastening the migrants into the packing cases. Then the clang as the container doors were shut and sealed and they waited in silence until they felt themselves lifted up and loaded.

  An hour later the ship began to move.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Eyes of Pauguk

  Walton Backwaters, Monday 28 May 2007

  A flattened cigarette packet with a crowded message written in blue biro on the cardboar
d side. FOLLOW THE SIGNS IF YOU WANTS TO SAY HELLO. THERE IS NO NEED IF YOU DO NOT FEEL CORDIAL. DON’T GET SEEN. YOUR LOVING DAD (OR STEP-DAD) BILL

  “Cordial’s for you, Anna. It means you don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

  “He’s got my sister, hasn’t he?”

  Luke and Liam had dropped their pretend games at once. The note had been written for them. This was their loving Dad, their personal, returned ex-convict.

  “What about you, Donny? You coming? You don’t even know our dad.”

  “I suppose I could say the same as Anna: he’s got my mum. Hey, of course I want to meet your dad. Question is whether he’ll feel okay about meeting me?”

  “We told him about you already.” Liam was taking big breaths as if he needed extra oxygen. “When you was living at the vicarage first time. About Hawkins and Treasure Island an’ all.”

  “Then we’re all in this together. Come on, everyone. Let’s get looking for the signs.”

  “At least this weather means that we won’t get seen – because there’s absolutely no-one anywhere to see us,” commented Anna, using her binoculars methodically.

  “Sticks,” shouted Luke. “Two of ’em and weed. Could be an arrow!”

  “Gotta be,” said Liam.

  After that, the trail was easy. They found themselves hurrying further along the beach towards the Naze, following arrows formed from driftwood, pebbles, weed and shells. Then a heap of dried reed stalks directed them to turn inwards and take the first of the curved paths that led across the saltings. It was slightly higher than the surrounding marsh and gave good clearance above the flooded dyke.

  Liam, running ahead, stopped suddenly beside the remains of a flat grey punt. It would never float again, but whoever had abandoned it had cared enough to make it fast to a stake, and turn it upside down on a couple of crates so that it would resist the worst of the weather for as long as possible. Bundles of reeds stacked against two of its sides suggested that some enterprising birdwatcher had used it as a hide.