I shake my head and sit down. So Chaz has fooled Mum and probably Kevin now and should I add Mum to my list of people to interrogate?
Terrific, now I sound like a torturer!
Kim pours me some tea and Kevin puts three slices of toast on a plate for me and I have to admit it feels really good to be fussed over for once. Then Mum picks up the paper I’ve brought home and says in this really loud voice, “Look at these headlines, Kevin.”
Kevin takes the paper, and reads out, “Bogus immigrants. Should at least get their facts right.”
I’ve stopped sipping my tea and my ears prick up.
“Aren’t they bogus if they sneak in on the back of a truck?” I say. I take a bite of toast and try to look casual.
“Or parachute down?” says Kim with a smile. At least she’s listening, but it’s not funny, is it?
“Everyone’s got the right to seek asylum,” says Kevin. “They’re calling all asylum seekers bogus, as though they’re coming here just to live off the state.”
“Aren’t they?” I say with an innocent look. But inside I’m worrying that maybe Kevin and Mum do agree with all that stuff in the paper. Maybe they think Samir and his family should be sent back to Iraq. I have to be sure.
“It’s complicated,” says Kevin with a sigh, and I think he’s just going to stop there. He sips his tea and then he says, “Take the Poles, they’re economic migrants from the EU, so they can come here and work, right? But then there’s refugees. They come because it’s too dangerous to stay in their own countries, right, Sheila?”
Mum sort of nods but I can see she’s not sure.
“Like Henri who works in our kitchen,” goes on Kevin.
“From Cameroon,” says Kim, and I look at her in surprise.
I didn’t know about Henri.
“Right, he had to run away because he said something against the government and they would have killed him.”
“So he has permission to stay here?” I say.
“He does now, but it took years as an asylum seeker. The Home Office only sent him his documents last December. Now he has refugee status.”
“I don’t get it,” I say, confused. “Is he a refugee or an asylum seeker?”
Kevin rubs a hand down his face. “That’s the difficult bit. You ask for asylum at the border, they call you an asylum seeker. Then when they give you permission to stay, which can take years, they give you refugee status. There’s loads more things as well but you’ll have to look them up on the Internet. I can’t remember it all.”
Kim’s sitting on the floor braiding Trudy’s hair, not really listening.
Mum’s pouring more tea. Why doesn’t she say something? Maybe she doesn’t care; maybe she’s against people coming into the country. It’s not exactly something we’ve ever talked about. Why should we?
But right now I have to know exactly what Mum and Kevin really think and I can’t keep guessing. It feels like they have to pass some sort of test.
“What would you do if an asylum seeker turned up in your street, hungry and cold, with nowhere to go?” I say.
Mum looks at me in surprise. “Is this homework?”
“No,” I mutter, “it’s just, well, you see it on the news all the time.”
“I don’t know,” says Mum, fussing with the teapot again. Does that mean she passes the test and cares about people who have to run away from their countries, or fails it and I have to move out and live like a hermit?
“I’d probably call the police, right, Sheila?” says Kevin with a short laugh.
Mum nods vaguely and my heart sinks.
I decide to give it one more try. “But what if you knew they’d be deported and tortured, or even killed back in their own countries, then what would you do?”
“How do you know all that?” says Mum, giving me a strange look.
“School,” I say shortly, and then I add, “Mr. Spicer did it in class on Friday, didn’t he, Kim?”
Kim shrugs and picks up a piece of toast.
I look at Kevin and he rubs his hand across his face again. Then he says, “Well, in that case, I’d bring them in, cook them a great big plate of steak and chips and then see what we could do for them. Everyone has a right to be safe, providing they’re not just spongers, right, Sheila?”
I look across at Mum. It feels like the most important moment of my life so far. Will she fail me?
Mum is looking thoughtful and then she says slowly, “Yes, of course.”
I almost shout out with relief. So it’s not just me and I don’t have to go off and find a cave to live in all alone for the rest of my life and then Kim and I jump up at exactly the same time and race upstairs.
Before we’re even in my room Kim starts rattling on about Trumpet Steven again, as if we were still at the school party.
“. . . and you know what, Steven says that one more straight run-through and he thinks I’m ready, so I won’t stay too long today because Steven is coming over and . . .”
But I push Kim into my room, slam the door and put on the radio at full blast. “Shut up and listen. I’ve got something to tell you.”
“I knew it!” Kim laughs. “I just knew you had something planned. What are we doing? All-night barbecue on the beach?”
“As if,” I snort.
And then I tell her all about Samir and Mohammed and her eyes just get wider and wider until I’m sure she’s lost the ability to blink forever.
15. Doubts and Fears
When I finish there’s an awful silence in the room as Kim just sits there staring at me. What’s she thinking? What’s she going to do?
It would only take a nanosecond for Kim to rush downstairs and spill the whole story. Would she? Could she? And then she starts up.
“Oh my God! Are you mad? Crazy? Completely off your trolley? They’ll lock you up, lock up your mum, lock up . . . I don’t know, everyone, Trudy!” And she grabs Trudy by the collar and starts to cuddle her so fiercely, Trudy whimpers and struggles free.
“Quiet,” I hiss. I go to listen at the door. “They’ll hear.” But Kim’s really working herself up now.
“Hiding an asylum seeker! Do you know what they do about that? I mean, I don’t even know, but I can guess. Wait till your mum finds out about this, you’ll be grounded until you’re fifty!”
She stops and I pray she’s run out of steam, but then she sucks in her breath as though even worse thoughts have occurred to her and like a roller coaster starts all over again. “What do you even know about this man? Does he have a gun?”
“No, Kim, he doesn’t actually have anything.” But she isn’t listening.
“He could be a terrorist planning, I don’t know, a suicide bombing or something!”
“On Hayling Island?”
“Why not, no one would expect it down here. I mean, does he have a passport? How do you know where he is really from? How do we even know he is who he says he is?” she says, finishing triumphantly.
Finally she’s run out of steam, her eyes blinking now with the extreme effort of trying to impress on me the enormity of what I’ve fallen into.
“I know it’s possible,” I say in a sort of calm voice, although it keeps wobbling as I look into her frowning face. “But I believe Mohammed’s story. You’ve got to trust me.”
Kim’s staring at me with her wide, unblinking eyes, so at least I know she’s listening. I almost don’t want to stop talking for fear of what she might say next. What if she thinks we should go to the police? So I carry on.
“No one knows Mohammed is here, we just need a little more time, a day or two, that’s all I’m saying, so we can find someone to help him. Samir says there are all sorts of organizations. Samir’s been here for years and he knows . . .”
“Samir says . . . Samir knows . . .” mimics Kim, and her tone is really angry. “What the hell does he know about anything? He’s not even English.”
“So?”
“So how does he know how the system works? What abou
t his parents, can’t they do anything?”
“They’re dead.”
“Dead?” and the frown begins to fade.
Kim’s world is very different from mine, full of her big, fun-filled family, none of whom have ever died. Not like me with Grandpa dead hardly a year and Dad gone off with the Gremlin, and absolutely nothing like Samir.
“They were tortured and killed by Saddam Hussein when Samir was nine,” I say quietly. “He was taken out of the country to England. He was in a horrible foster home for nearly a year. Then his brother and auntie came over so he lives with them now. Kim, it’s not safe for Mohammed to go back home to Iraq, and if we turn him in, that’s where he’ll end up. You have to believe it.”
I slump down on the bed. It feels as though I’m trying to carry an elephant up a mountain all by myself. Trudy climbs up onto my lap and tries to lick my face but I push her away. Then I look over at Kim and she’s wiping a tear from the corner of her eye.
The thing about Kim is she worries about stuff a lot, like her audition and not being late for school and always crossing on the green man, but she is the kindest, most generous person I know. In fact, all her family are the same and I don’t know how I could ever think that she wouldn’t at least want to help. But I really don’t know what I’d do if she walked away from this right now.
As she stands up, I’m terrified that’s just what she’s about to do.
I sit on the bed and watch her standing in the middle of the room and it’s like I can see her brain thinking through her mass of hair. Two whole minutes pass by on the clock radio and I’m practically holding my breath. Then Kim slips a glittery band off her wrist, shakes her hair and pulls it back tightly in a ponytail and slips the band on. My heart’s in my mouth as she starts to speak.
“Well, won’t hurt to meet your man, will it?” she says.
Yeeesss! I think, relief flooding through me.
“We have to take him some supplies,” I say.
“Does Trudy come too?”
“Of course, she’s chief refugee spotter!”
“Well, let’s hope she doesn’t spot any more,” says Kim grimly, and I lead the way out of the bedroom.
Kevin’s just leaving as we get downstairs and Mum’s dozing off so Kim and I can gather everything we need without any interference. Heaving bags of food, extra blankets, flasks of coffee and a fresh hot-water bottle, we let ourselves out quietly and walk around to the hut, Trudy scampering ahead.
It’s still very cold outside but the sky is bright. The tide’s beginning to turn, revealing a really good stretch of sand for running over. I can see a group of teenagers, older than us, hanging around the pillbox, drinking beer and smoking. I’m worried they’ll get curious if they see us crawling through the hole in the fence, but we manage to skip through while they’re distracted by a passing speedboat.
When we reach the hut I put my finger up to silence Kim. She nods but I can’t see her face behind the huge bag she’s carrying. What’s she really thinking? There’s no time to ask. I don’t want to startle Samir and get into an argument before we’re safely inside. So I call softly through the window and Samir’s face appears.
“Have you got any food?” he says immediately, and then he notices Kim. His face shuts down as if someone has pressed the remote control. He stands back as we climb in.
I feel like a traitor.
16. Only Way to Get Warm
Mohammed’s sitting up in his sleeping bag, shivering, and when he sees Kim he starts to shake his head and mutter. The look on his face is almost menacing, his dark eyebrows knitted in an angry frown and his mouth jabbering away in Arabic. I can understand the tone at least and he’s really not happy.
“Kim’s my friend,” I say, but he just carries on in a low, almost threatening tone. I look at Kim and she shakes her head warily.
“Tell him, Samir,” I say.
But Samir’s kneeling down looking through the stuff, his face hidden, and I’m beginning to wish me and Kim were a million miles away. All that stuff about terrorists and plots streams back into my mind.
Then Samir hands Mohammed the hot-water bottle and suddenly Mohammed says, “Zank you, Aleex.”
For a moment I’m a bit stunned. His voice is quite soft and there’s a smile on his face.
“He does know a bit of English,” says Samir, guessing my thoughts as he bends down to unscrew the flask.
“Oh,” I say, wondering how much Mohammed can understand when we speak. I look over at Kim. She has a little frown on her face that appears when she’s really concentrating or just worried about something.
Mohammed reaches out for the coffee and he lets out a little yelp of pain. Samir helps him to change position but he’s giving out low yelps of pain all the time. I feel quite scared and I can’t help thinking, What if he dies? It would be all my fault for not getting a doctor. I’d have to explain to the police where the body came from and why we didn’t call them on Saturday when we found him. Shouldn’t he be in the hospital? I mean, what would they do, lock him up? Not in Britain, surely, they’d operate on him or something. There’s a deep cut on his forehead, which I can see through his straggling hair, and it doesn’t look very healthy.
Samir says something quietly to Mohammed—I really need to learn some Arabic, seems to me a lot more useful than French right now—and it sounds as though he’s trying to reassure Mohammed. Kim is watching them very carefully. Maybe she’s planning what she’s going to say to the police.
But then she says in her clear, ringing voice, “The best way to get warm, my mum always says, is a hot bath.”
In this decrepit hut? I begin to imagine how on earth we’d heat the water, let alone where we’d put it.
But Samir’s wonderful smile is spreading over his face and he says, “Great idea, but how?”
“Well, I suppose the only way is to go to Alix’s,” murmurs Kim as though she’s really only thinking aloud, and then I realize she’s serious.
“You what?” I explode.
Trouble is once Kim gets an idea into her head, it’s practically impossible to shake it off. She might be worried about guns and passports and stuff, but now she’s decided Mohammed needs a hot bath, nothing’s going to budge her.
“I’ll keep Sheila busy and you run him a bath. She won’t notice a thing.”
I’m speechless and meanwhile Mohammed is saying something in English, “Outside?” he keeps asking, and Samir is nodding and then he says something in Arabic.
Kim rocks back on her heels with a little smile on her face, more relaxed now.
“And you thought he was a terrorist,” I mutter to her.
“Whatever, right now he needs to get completely warm. It’s the only way, Ali,” and she’s staring at me, with her eyes unblinking like she does when she sort of wants to mesmerize me.
Then she scrambles to her feet, dusting down her jeans, and says cheerily, “Shall we go?” and Samir starts pulling Mohammed up and then everyone’s piling out of the window before I have a chance to say no.
“Hey, gang!” I yell once everyone’s standing outside the hut, Mohammed blinking in the morning sunlight. “What are we going to say to my mum? He’s a bit old to be in Year 10 in case no one’s noticed.”
Out here in the clear winter light I can see Mohammed properly for the first time. He’s so much older than us, maybe thirty, maybe older, it’s hard to tell because he’s such a mess and he stoops as if his back hurts.
But I can see he’s a bit taller than Samir, with the same dark hair and skin. Maybe that’s what everyone in Iraq looks like. His head is slightly bent, so that I can’t see into his eyes. Can you trust someone who won’t make eye contact, even if one eye is shut tight? Terrorist or frightened refugee; how on earth am I supposed to know?
Then Mohammed says, “No trouble, I go police, okay?”
“No way!” I say, a bit surprised at myself I must admit. Samir looks relieved. I glance nervously at Kim and she nods a bit more caut
iously but she’s still up for it.
“It’ll be okay but you’ve all got to be dead quiet. And no smoking.” I glare around at everyone and Kim looks surprised, but Samir gives me a grin.
We walk off, Mohammed leaning on us. Please don’t let Mrs. Saddler come by with Jeremy, I pray fervently. What would I say? She’d hardly believe I have an uncle who’s the spitting image of Osama Bin Laden. Which makes me as bad as everyone else, doesn’t it, and I get annoyed with myself for even having these thoughts. I’m just terrified someone will see us.
It takes us ages to get to the house, but Kim goes straight into the living room where Mum’s watching her quiz program.
“Hi, Sheila, I know that one, Beethoven’s Fifth,” Kim calls out, and Mum’s face lights up.
I stand in the doorway while Samir and Mohammed sneak upstairs. Somehow Kim has managed to turn up the sound on the remote control so Mum doesn’t hear the eighth and eleventh steps, which crack like a gun when you tread on them.
“Alexandra,” says Mum, eyes still on the TV, “why don’t you make us all some nice bacon sandwiches?” She’s enjoying all the attention from Kim.
“Good idea, er, just one thing, does bacon come from cows?” I say cautiously.
“Good grief, don’t they teach you anything at school? Why on earth do you want to know that?” Mum laughs.
I mutter something about geography and farming next term and she says, “Bacon comes from pigs, always has and always will.”
Right, I think as I retreat to the kitchen, cheese on toast for the boys, bacon sandwiches for the rest of us. At least I won’t make that mistake again. It’s not easy hiding an illegal immigrant, especially one with special dietary needs.
While I’m in the kitchen making the snacks, I can hear Samir and Mohammed lumbering around in the little bathroom overhead. Our cottage is so small and the ceilings are quite low. There’s gurgling from all the pipes as the bath begins to fill up. I’m terrified Mum’s going to suddenly decide to stomp into the kitchen on her crutches and get suspicious.
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