Page 8

James

February 1998

“Look at this!” his mother says. “We made it.”

James glances up expectantly. He is eleven years old and has never been to the seaside before. He’s seen it on television and in brochures, though, and for the last few weeks the images have been locked in his head, waiting to become real. Warm yellow sunshine; blue skies and seas; everyone smiling and happy. He’s been so giddy that he’s found it hard to sleep.

But as his mother takes the turnoff for the campsite now, it’s nothing like how he imagined. He leans down to peer out, and his heart sinks a little. It’s not very different at all. The sky through the windscreen ahead is gray and empty—the same one he sees every day out of his little bedroom window in the tower block—and there’s no sign of the sea. There’s just grass shivering in the cold wind on the ridges of moorland around them.

It could be anywhere.

Hey! Barnaby tells him. You’re strong!

You’re brave!

James strokes the head of the soft toy lion in his lap.

Barnaby is his best friend. James has had him for as long as he can remember. He had an argument with his mother last year, because the other children at school were beginning to make fun of him for taking Barnaby into lessons, and his mother wanted him to stop. I’ll look after him at home; he’ll be fine, I promise. She’d been pretty full-on about it. But when he finally managed to get it through to her how much Barnaby helped him, she had eventually sighed and looked sad, and then she hadn’t mentioned it again.

They pull up on an expanse of gravel at the side of the road.

James looks around. The car park is bedraggled and empty. But that makes sense, right? His mother has told him—over and over—that this is an odd time of year to come on holiday, but that it means the place will be cheap and they’ll have it all to themselves. It had sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as him, and he can tell that she’s still trying to do that now, staring out at this windswept, barren place.

She says something now. He doesn’t quite catch it.

“Mum?” he asks.

A dot of rain lands on the windscreen.

“I said I’m sorry , James. I know it doesn’t look that good.”

He looks at her for a moment, feeling helpless. It’s bad when she’s angry at him, but that doesn’t happen often and it doesn’t matter because he knows it won’t last. It’s always so much worse when she’s like this: angry at herself. Because she doesn’t deserve to be.

You know what to do , Barnaby tells him.

“It looks great, Mum.” He remembers what she’s told him. “We’ll make the best of it. There are some nice walks around here. And you borrowed a little gas burner, so we can cook dinner together out in the open tonight. And the sleeping bags are warmer than they look. We’ll have fun.”

She stares back at him for a moment.

He waits.

Then she ruffles his hair.

“You and me against the world, James,” she says quietly. “Right?”

“Yes.” He’s so pleased. “Always.”

They get out of the car and his mother opens the trunk. They begin to collect their gear, and James looks around the car park again. It’s empty to all intents and purposes… but actually, not quite.

He pauses for a moment, his fingers on the back of the car.

There’s an old camper van tucked away out of sight in one corner, dark and dirty. The branches of the trees above are overgrown and hanging down over it. The vehicle looks abandoned, as though it has been sitting there for years, but there’s something about it that bothers him.

He stares at the pitch-black windows of the cab.

It’s empty, or it looks it, but—

“James!”

He flinches suddenly—then moves his hands away quickly just as the lid of the boot slams down.

The sound echoes around the car park. His mother stares at him.

“Just pay attention,” she says. “Please?”

He’s not sure if she’s talking to him or herself, but he nods anyway.

Then he collects his share of the bags at the back of the car, and follows his mother over the ridge ahead of them. And while he can still feel that old camper van behind him, he doesn’t look back.

James helps his mother pitch the tent—or at least, he tries to. The whole thing is baffling and impossible. He struggles to click the sticks into place and then bend them through the loops on the thin fabric. The frustration becomes almost overwhelming, and he bites his lip in concentration. Everything starts shaking. The tent, the sticks, his hands. Then the end flicks away upward, and he falls back on his heels.

“It doesn’t want to be built,” he says.

His mother is struggling too and seems to be about to lose her temper.

“Don’t do this, James.”

“I wish Dad was here.”

That’s the anger talking. There’s probably nothing he could have said that would hurt his mother more. The stupid thing is that he isn’t even sure if it’s true: it’s been such a long time since James has seen his father that he can’t even really remember what he looks like. It’s more like he’s an absence that would be comforting to fill .

But he knows that’s not how his mother feels. James wrote a letter to his father just before Christmas, talking about life, and how he wished they were all still together. He even drew him a picture. But when he gave it to his mother, she’d tried to argue. So he’d got upset with her, and just as with Barnaby, she’d eventually sighed and looked sad, and promised to send it. But he isn’t sure if she did.

She takes a few deep breaths now, and then puts her hand on his arm.

“I’m trying,” she says.

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to be. Just work with me, okay?”

There is a look of resolve on her face: a determination to make the best of it, despite the shabbiness and smallness of it all.

“Okay,” he says.

When they finish building the tent, it looks barely sufficient to protect them from the elements, but James feels happy with it.

Are you proud of me? he thinks.

That’s all he ever wants, but as usual he doesn’t dare to ask the question. What if she doesn’t reply? Because he’s let go of the anger from earlier, but he’s not sure his mother has. Emotions come and go quickly for him, but he knows that grown-ups hold on to them for much longer, and his mother more than most. So he just thinks the question instead: concentrating on it so hard that it seems impossible she won’t be able to read his mind.

Are you proud of me?

“I’ll just get some things from the car,” she says.

“I’ll come with you.”

“I just need a minute to myself, James.”

He hesitates. “Okay.”

And then he waits by the tent, hoping that she’ll be better when she gets back. The seconds tick by. She returns a few minutes later with a bag of their belongings: a blanket and towel; a Frisbee. And he’s relieved to see that her mood has settled and she looks a little brighter.

“ All right, then ,” she says. “Let’s go and find the sea.”

It’s a longer walk than he’s expecting, down a trail lined with more of that shivering grass. There are signposts warning that it’s not safe to swim here because of the currents. Which doesn’t matter to him—learning to swim is one of many things he hasn’t had a chance to do yet—but it does make him wonder why people come here. And when they get to the beach, it turns out to be more rock than sand, and the sea is a vast gray expanse: nothing like the way he imagined it. The tide is going out, leaving a web of scummy froth between the pebbles, and the shingle crunches beneath his feet.

But.

Just work with me, okay?

They play with the Frisbee for a while. It’s okay at first, and James feels good whenever the feathered plastic edge lands solidly in his hand. But his mother is already finding it hard.

“The wind!” she keeps saying.

It’s not that windy though, and he’s managing to throw it to her without a problem. As time goes on, she begins to fumble her catches more, and then James starts having to dart forward as her attempts to throw it back to him fall shorter and shorter.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

Her voice sounds tired. Smeared.

And James realizes why she wanted to go to the car by herself. At home, his mother keeps the pill bottles hidden away on the top shelf of the bathroom cabinet, but she’s lost track of how much James has grown recently, and he can reach them now if he stands on tiptoes. The bottles are very old, the original labels all but worn off. He thinks his mother used to get the pills from the chemist, but that at some point she started getting different ones from somewhere else instead.

“It’s okay,” he tells her.

“I just… all this exercise. Maybe I need a little lie down.”

She sets out the blanket and curls up, and within a minute she’s fast asleep. James spreads the towel over her as best he can. He knows from experience that it’ll be an hour or so before she wakes up, which means that he’s alone for now. But that’s fine. For one thing, Barnaby will keep him safe .

And anyway, there’s nobody else here.

You’re brave! Barnaby tells him. You’re very brave!

Yes, James thinks. I am.

The stretch of coastline here is formed of a series of inlets, separated by steep ridges of rock. The tide has retreated enough for him to walk around the edge of this beach and into the next, which turns out to be a little wider than the one behind, but just as stony underfoot. The wind has picked up a little now. It’s cold, and comes in sudden gusts that he can see rippling on the surface of the gray water like gooseflesh.

He stands as close to the edge of the sea as he dares.

The sight of it stretching out all the way to the horizon makes him feel small. But it’s odd. He spends most of his life feeling that way and hating it, but the sensation is different here. It’s not like when he’s lying in bed at night, staring at the damp on the thin wall and listening to the baby crying in the neighbor’s flat. Not like when he’s being bullied by the other kids, or ignored by the teachers. Here, it’s strangely comforting, as though the world is telling him that deep down it’s the same for everyone, and it’s just that most people don’t realize it.

He closes his eyes.

Breathes in deeply.

And then he hears something.

He opens his eyes and turns slowly, scanning the beach. The sound is delicate—barely distinguishable from the wind—but it sounds like someone whistling. Where is it coming from though? There’s nobody in sight. And he hasn’t seen another living soul the whole time they’ve been here.

He looks up at the ridge behind him.

It’s dark against the sky, the grass shivering at the edge.

Empty.

And yet the whistling sound is a little louder than before. It’s a tune of some kind. There’s something familiar about it, even though he doesn’t think he’s ever heard it before. How can that be possible? And suddenly, everything feels off-kilter. The empty beach; the ethereal music. It’s as though when he rounded those rocks and left his mother behind him, he stepped out of the real world and into a different and more dangerous one.

He clutches Barnaby to his chest.

You’re strong, James! the lion says. You’re brave!

But maybe you should go back now.

And he wants to do that, but it doesn’t feel like he can. He won’t be able to wake his mother up, and what would he say if he managed to? He wants her to be proud of him, not think he’s a silly, scared little boy. Except that a scared little boy is exactly what he is right now. And there’s a hypnotic quality to the whistling that is holding him in place.

He looks back up at the ridge again.

The top is no longer empty now. A man is standing there, silhouetted against the sky behind. He’s so black that it is impossible to make out anything about him at all.

Run! Barnaby says.

But James remains frozen.

The man begins walking steadily down the embankment toward him.

Run!

But he can’t. And then it’s like time begins to blur. As the man approaches him, and the whistling grows louder, James sees his mother waking up an hour from now. She is groggy at first, because it always takes her a little time to come around, but her first proper thought will be of him. Because he knows that she loves him. She’ll sit up carefully and call his name. When he doesn’t shout back, she’ll feel a small curl of panic against her heart, but she won’t be properly worried, not at first. He’ll be at the tent, she’ll think. Everything will be fine, because of course it will be, and—

The whistling stops.

“Nobody sees,” the man says.

He ruffles James’s hair with a rough, dirty hand.

“And nobody cares.”