Kim and Steven climb straight upstairs, laughing away like a couple of kids on an outing. The top of the bus is empty and they go right to the back and sit down close together.
They probably want to practice their Mozart fingering, I decide, so I go up front and sit on my own.
I have to admit it’s good to have some time to myself to think. So much has happened today. But apart from all the stuff with the police and the fight and now another person involved in our massive secret, something else happened this morning that has been lurking around in the back of my mind.
Just before I dashed out of the house, already late for school because I’d spent ages upstairs after the police had gone, Mum had called from the living room, “Alexandra.”
“What!” I’d yelled back impatiently.
She didn’t answer, so I stomped in, moaning at being made even more late.
Mum was sort of tucked under a blanket, breakfast telly blaring out.
“Sausages for dinner?” she said.
“Whatever,” I muttered, annoyed she had held me back for such a stupid reason and then I ran off.
But now when I think about it, Mum’s face was all smudged and bleary as though she’d been crying. If she has, shouldn’t I be going back home instead of charging off to our man? And I’m skipping detention with Mr. Spicer this evening. I’d already decided there was no way I was going to detention, leaving Kim to take Steven to the hut. Samir would go ballistic.
I wonder why my mum was crying. Is it because of Grandpa? Or maybe my “waste of space” Dad? Or maybe it’s something I’ve done to her, like how I behaved when the police came around. And I’m just deciding that of course it’s because of me, I mean let’s face it I’m not exactly Daughter of the Year at the moment, yelling at her about Dad and hiding stuff from her, when the bus stops at Sandy Point.
After the bright sunshine yesterday, today is cold, gray and miserable again. It rained quite a lot this morning and the path over the marsh to the Lifeboat Station is almost under water. There are a couple of yachts tacking to and fro out on the Solent but the yacht club road is deserted like most Mondays in winter.
Steven is picking his way gingerly through the mud. He’s still wearing his shiny school shoes.
Kim’s back in her fantasy world of Mozart, humming to herself, and I’m getting totally worked up about how Samir is going to react when I turn up with another school friend.
So I’m not really concentrating when I turn around the side of the Lifeboat Station. The beach below the piles of breakwater pebbles is mostly deserted. But down by the pillbox I can see two figures, one standing, one leaning against the old concrete wall. Its takes me a couple of seconds to realize why they look so familiar.
Its Samir and Mohammed!
“There they are,” says Kim cheerfully, and she pulls Steven down the pebbles. I try to sprint ahead to get there first but I slip and I’m too late. By the time I arrive Samir is scuffing his torn sneakers in the sand and winding his Arsenal scarf around his neck, glaring at Steven.
“Just listen, Samir, please,” Kim is saying. “Steven’s all right, he’s safe, he’s not going to run to the police or his parents, are you, Steve?” and she pulls on Steven’s arm, as if to encourage him.
Steven’s face is impassive. He is watching Mohammed carefully and as usual Mohammed’s head is bent, his eyes and face hidden, his scruffy hair sticking out from under a black beanie hat, which Samir must have given him.
“What are you doing out here? Someone might see you,” I say nervously to Samir, but he doesn’t answer me, his eyes are fixed on Steven.
Any minute now someone is going to kick off again, and if it’s me I don’t think even Kim will be able to cool me down.
Then Steven says to Samir, “You support Arsenal?” Silence from the ice man.
“Do you think they’ll win the League?” says Steven, and Samir shrugs.
Mohammed raises his head, his face wary. The wound on his forehead, above his bruised eye, looks very hot and red, and sort of green around the edges. Samir said the smugglers hit him with a baseball bat before they chucked him overboard. I can’t help wondering if Steven brought the antibiotics with him, but it doesn’t seem the right moment to ask.
Mohammed starts speaking in a low voice and I can make out the words “. . . football . . . Iraq . . . win . . .” mixed in with Arabic. Samir gives a sort of scornful laugh, and they’re both looking at us in a funny, peculiar way. Kim signals to me with her eyes and I raise my eyebrows back. Now what’s going on?
Then Samir says, “Arsenal’s a great team, but we support the Iraqi football team, the Lions of Mesopotamia,” and his voice sounds all sort of proud.
He says something quickly to Mohammed. It sounds a bit like “ammo,” does that mean ammunition? I decide to ask. “Ammo what?”
Samir laughs more gently. “Ammo Baba,” he says. “He’s our greatest footballer, like the Pelé of Iraqi football.” Mohammed nods and snorts in agreement.
“Last summer we beat Saudi Arabia one-nothing and we won the Asian cup,” Samir goes on. “The whole of Baghdad went crazy. People were running through the streets waving flags, and some of them were even firing guns in the air. It was on the news. Me and Naazim and Auntie Selma were jumping up and down so much the Chinese below were knocking on the ceiling.” And Samir gives a big grin.
“We saw it on TV,” says Steven, which really catches me by surprise. How does he know stuff like that? “It was really cool. My mum and dad said maybe it’d be a new beginning for Iraq.”
I can’t imagine snooty Steven’s mum worrying about Iraq’s future. But then what do I know? I thought Chaz was cool and look how he turned out, and then I thought Kim was racist. How wrong was that? So much for relying on my own judgments.
But Samir says something to Mohammed and they are both looking at Steven in a more sort of curious way, which is better than open hostility.
Then Steven gets the box of pills out of his pocket and offers them to Mohammed. This doesn’t go down too well. Mohammed shrinks away as if he’s scared, and he starts waving one arm around and saying, “No, no.”
“He thinks you’re offering him drugs,” says Samir, and says something in Arabic to Mohammed.
I can’t help grinning. Geeky Steven with the pressed jeans and Toyota mum, pushing drugs on Hayling beach. Well, he is, of course, only they’re just antibiotics.
Samir and Mohammed talk some more and then Mohammed reaches out and takes the pills.
“Zank you,” he says, raising his eyes and looking up at us for the first time.
And then we have one of those embarrassing moments when no one knows what to say next. Everyone goes dead silent, and all you can hear are the gulls screaming and the sea dragging back and forth over the sand. Samir has turned and he’s staring out to sea, all frozen up again. Mohammed has tucked back into himself. I can see Kim is standing very close to Steven and I’m just wondering if I’ve missed something when there’s a hooting and whistling and we all turn, startled.
It’s Terrence Bellows and he’s got blond Gaz with him, the biggest thug in Terrence’s gang. What has Lindy gone and done?
25. Not So Brave
Terrence and Gaz swagger over, their baggy jeans halfway down their hips, jackets wide open, fists clenched by their sides. They’re grinning like apes showing off their teeth and you can see they think they’ve won the lottery or something.
“Bingo!” yells Terrence, and Gaz gives out a really nasty laugh. “Bloody United Nations just swam in. What you monkeys doing hanging around my gaff?” And he slaps the side of the pillbox. Lindy must have blabbed to him, otherwise what is he doing all the way down here?
He suddenly shoves Samir hard to one side so he falls into Steven and Kim, almost tripping them over. Blond Gaz makes a move toward me and I step back, my feet skidding on the wet sand.
I’m terrified, so what is everyone else feeling?
Then Terrence reaches down and rip
s Mohammed’s hat off his head. Mohammed cowers down.
“Mate, we’re being overrun,” he roars to blond Gaz. “Hundreds of ’em, and you muppets,” he points what looks like a flick knife at me and Kim and Steven, “should be thinking about your own people instead of hanging around with this scum.”
He snorts back and then lands a huge gob of spit on Mohammed’s head. Gaz laughs like a drain, as Grandpa used to say.
I’m looking around desperately for Trudy to rescue me. But I haven’t been home yet so of course she’s not here. What are we going to do if these two set on us?
“We don’t want any trouble,” says Steven in his BBC English, which just makes the thugs hoot even louder. Steven’s face is deathly white, and he’s put his arm around Kim who looks like she’s shrunk even smaller.
I reach in my pocket for my cell phone and wonder if I can dial the police without removing it, but even if I could there’s no signal down on the beach. By the time we even hear the sirens, which could take ages to get down the Island, we’d be mincemeat and the thugs long gone. Anyway, I’m not sure if I want Good Cop and Bad Cop turning up now. We’re breaking the law ourselves, aren’t we?
Terrence and Gaz are throwing the woolly hat between them, yelling, “Come and get it, Taliban.”
Mohammed has raised his head slightly and Samir says something to him in Arabic. “What you gibbering about, you monkeys?” mocks Terrence. Gaz starts burbling nonsense words, which makes the two of them laugh even harder.
How dumb can you get? I’m beginning to get really, really angry and I can feel myself tensing, ready to leap at one of them and to hell with the consequences. Kim is already reaching out a steadying hand toward me when Mohammed stands up.
He’s quite tall when he straightens, and as he squares his shoulders the thugs take a step backward like Lindy did in the hut. They’re not so brave now.
A steady stream of Arabic is coming from Samir and it sounds as though he’s pleading with Mohammed.
“Mate,” says Gaz, “time to go, eh? Looks like he’s gonna throw a bomb or something.”
I wish, I can’t help thinking.
“I’m not scared of him,” snarls Terrence, and with a sudden movement he flicks open the blade of the knife.
I hear Kim gasp beside me and I freeze on the spot. Now what are we going to do?
Samir is reaching out to Mohammed but Mohammed takes a step sideways and roars out in a massive terrifying voice, “No more!”
He whirls around, kicking out his right foot, like something out of a Kung Fu movie.
His foot slams into some empty beer bottles standing on a rock. The bottles rocket into the air and smash against the concrete wall of the pillbox, splintering glass toward Terrence and Gaz.
They both duck and throw their arms up as shards of glass rain down on them.
Wow! I think, that’s finished them, but Terrence still has the knife and he jabs it toward Mohammed. I get a sudden ghastly picture of blood spurting from his stomach.
I’m about to lunge forward when Mohammed kicks the knife so sweetly that Terrence’s hand flies open and the knife drops onto the wet sand. Terrence lets out a cry of pain. “I’m outta here,” Gaz says in a shaky voice.
“Wait for me,” yells Terrence, and they both take off running and stumbling back up the mound of breakwater pebbles, swearing back at Mohammed over their shoulders.
At the top Terrence stops for a second and yells out, “This ain’t over,” and he makes a rude gesture.
Then they disappear.
We all let out a sigh of relief.
“That is very good, they go away now,” says Mohammed, and it’s the first time I’ve heard him speak so clearly.
It feels a bit weird; I thought he only knew a few words. It makes me feel very suspicious again just as I was beginning to trust him.
What do I really know about our man and what he’s doing here?
But before I can say anything Steven says in his grown-up voice, “I didn’t know you spoke English.”
Mohammed nods and rubs a hand across his face. “I learn some in the university. My brother, he is better, he is very, very good.”
I look across to Samir and he says to me and Steven, “Mohammed and his brother were interpreters for the British army in Basra. The army couldn’t have coped without people like them.”
“I see,” I say, but Samir can see I’m suspicious. He tries to fix me with that pleading look but I give a slight shake of my head.
Mohammed says, “I know English, but not good and then the men hit my head and it is hurt. The sea gives me so cold and I feel very sick. I cannot think . . .” He says something in Arabic to Samir.
“Mohammed was very confused when we found him. It was difficult for him to think clearly and remember his English. It’s only coming back slowly,” Samir says. He takes a step toward me. “Alix?” he says, but I don’t reply.
No one says anything for a minute. Then Mohammed says in a tired voice, “I come to England to ask your queen to help me.”
“That might be a bit difficult,” says Steven, and he gives Kim a squeeze.
Kim’s eyes are wide as saucers.
“She is a good queen,” says Mohammed more firmly, “and she must listen. I tell her I work hard to keep her soldiers safe. Dangerous work. You understand?” He looks around at us with such desperation and fear.
“You must to understand, you are helping me, all of you, and now I need your queen to help me. I cannot go back. They have kill my brother and they will kill me.” He slumps to the ground exhausted.
There’s a shocked silence except for the gulls wheeling and crying overhead. Kim has buried her face in Steven’s jacket and Samir is staring out to sea, frozen like an ice man.
But Steven isn’t looking convinced. “So where did you learn martial arts?” he says.
Mohammed is silent, his head slumped onto his chest. Say something, I think. Now’s your chance to convince us all, and then with a sudden stab of fear I think, Did I get this all wrong? Maybe he’s been fooling us all along and he’s really a trained terrorist come over here to bomb us to death.
Samir turns and we stare straight into each other’s eyes. His face is strained and tense. Is he scared he’s made a terrible mistake too?
Then Mohammed lifts his head and his eyes are dulled with pain. “I learn in university,” he says in such a quiet voice we all lean forward to catch his words. “I am best at kickboxing, I win all the . . .”—he mutters a word in Arabic that sounds like jahwize and stares up at Samir.
“Prizes,” says Samir. “He was the best in his year at martial arts. That’s all,” and his face relaxes with relief. He pats Mohammed gently on the back.
“He’s a peaceful man, aren’t you, my friend?” Mohammed nods briefly and lets his head drop again.
I hesitate and I can almost feel Samir’s eyes boring into me. This is not the time to make a mistake, and then I remember asking Grandpa just before he died, “How did you know you did the right thing, going to France? You could have been killed.”
“Gut feeling,” he told me. “It felt right and off I went.” Right now I feel in my gut that Mohammed is a good person.
I say in a clear voice, “I believe him.”
There’s a general mutter and everyone relaxes and then I say, “The trouble is, the police came to my house this morning and . . .”
“The police?” Samir and Kim and Steven all yell out at the same time.
So how come I’m always the one who ends up in trouble?
26. More Trouble?
Steven’s looking worried. He obviously didn’t bargain for this when he said he’d come and meet Mohammed.
I tell them what happened before school. “So the police are already alerted. Now do you see why he has to stay in the hut all the time?”
Everyone nods, even Mohammed.
“What about that refugee group you said could help him?” I say to Samir.
“I haven’t had
time to get on the Internet in the library,” Samir says with a shake of his head.
Then Steven says thoughtfully, “My mum knows a bit about refugee organizations . . .”
“Your mum?” I interrupt, and then I shut my mouth. Steven glares at me and I feel as though I’m in the principal’s office or something.
“What’s the problem?” he says.
“She always looks so . . .” Posh, I think, but I don’t want to say that out loud.
Kim shuffles a bit closer to Steven, and Samir has an arm under Mohammed’s shoulders, heaving him up. No one’s standing near me. “Do you always judge people by appearances?” says Steven in that cool voice.
That’s exactly what racists do, isn’t it? Kim is looking up at me and then at Steven with this sort of confused look on her face. I go bright red and mumble a sort of apology, feeling really small.
“Anyway,” goes on Steven, “I’m not going to tell Mum anything, it’s just that she’s a useful resource.” He makes her sound like a search engine on the Web.
We help Mohammed back to the hut and Samir says, “I had to leave my last school because of racist bullies like Terrence. I can’t keep changing schools.”
Steven says, “You’re not going anywhere, Samir. You have friends at Park Road,” and Mohammed repeats “friends” in a low mutter, as we all nod in agreement.
We walk together to the bus stop and Steven’s got his arm around Kim again. How did I miss that? Geeky Steven and my best friend—an item? Even though he’s a bit geeky, I feel happy for Kim. “Way to go, kid!” as Dad would say when he did his American accent.
Mum’s in the kitchen when I get home and as Trudy jumps up at me, desperate for a walk, Mum says, “You’re late; I was going to start on the sausages.”
She looks miserable, as if that’s anything new, but then she says in this really slow and sort of strange voice, “Where have you been this time?”
This time, what does she mean by that?
“I had a detention, the police coming this morning, they made me late for school.” Excellent. I skipped the detention. Yet another lie.
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