‘It happened before,’ Leah whispers.
‘What?’
‘Stones falling down the cliff. The sound of a gun. It’s that creepy bloke, I bet.’ She shudders. ‘Watching me. Weirdo pervert.’ She starts to giggle.
It’s no laughing matter. Mad Ed, with a gun. Again. There’s no place to hide. It would be like picking off crows. Not that Simon seriously believes Mad Ed will try to kill them. Does he?
‘Have you met him?’ Simon asks Leah.
‘Not really. But I’ve seen him, heard about him. Everyone’s heard about him round here. He used to hang around the town, ages back. He got into trouble with the police for watching people — families, children — on the beach or something. People complained.’
‘Sshh. Listen.’
There’s another trickle of soil from the cliff. The buzzards wheeling over the moor are circling higher. The lizard flicks its tongue under the rock.
‘I’m going up. To see.’
‘Be careful,’ Leah says. She lets go of his arm.
It’s a kind of test he sets himself, to see if he can do things that scare him.
Both his catapult and his knife are still in his bag, strapped to the bike. Stupid, to leave them there. He imagines he’s being filmed as he scrambles up the cliff. Gracefully he swings up over the top, gun ready for enemy fire.
Nothing there. A breeze ruffles the dried grass and the pale pink cushions of sea thrift that grow along the edge. When he looks down to wave at Leah he feels dizzy. He’s just about to yell down that there’s no one there when he notices a small ring of stones. Not a circle, he realizes as he gets closer: a shape like a heart. Each stone is the perfect size for the catapult, like the ones he found before on the stile that night. His heart begins to thud. What does it mean? Is it a message? A warning?
Simon scatters the heart with his foot. He can’t see anyone, but this cliff dips and curves so much anyone could have walked out of sight in the time it took him to climb up the cliff. It’s seriously spooky. The catapult stones on the stile, now these. And something else is nagging at the back of his mind. Those oyster shells left on the neat pile of camping stuff. Was that him too?
Now Leah’s huffing up the cliff after him. He won’t tell her about the stones. She climbs over the fence and he glimpses the smooth golden skin of her stomach and something inside him flips and squirms all over again. Leah, naked in the sea. Him pulling her out.
What would Dan or Johnny or Pike think, seeing him like this? They never talk about girls, the four of them. They pretend they don’t exist most of the time, the same way the girls in their year just ignore them. It’s not the same with all the Year Nine boys, it’s just that they are in a different league altogether. Dan, Pike, Jonny and him, they’re just not into clothes, or music, or being cool. Or going out with girls.
‘I’m going back the quick way,’ Leah says. ‘The way you didn’t tell me about. Like you didn’t tell me about the tides. Coming?’
‘I’m m-meeting Mum and Ellie down the town beach,’ Simon stammers. ‘I’ve got my bike.’
‘See you, then.’
‘You’ll be all right? With that bloke moping around?’
Leah gives him a scornful look. ‘Why? You offering to defend me?’
He feels himself blush. It’s a relief to watch her flounce off, flip-flops clacking.
The handlebars on the bike have heated up in the sun. The bike smells of hot metal, rubber, leather. He checks the knife and catapult are still in the bag, then retrieves them and puts them in his pocket instead. That bloke might be waiting further up.
The coast path’s too bumpy and uneven to cycle and he ends up pushing the bike most of the way. At last he gets to the tarmac path and scoots down the hill to the town beach.
It’s thick with people. How’s he ever going to find Mum and Ellie? Maybe they’ve gone home by now. At last he spots them, down at the sea’s edge, paddling in the shallow waves. He keeps wheeling over people’s mats and towels by mistake as he weaves his way across the sand between all the little family groups. People tut at him as if he’s doing it on purpose.
‘Simon!’ Ellie runs across the wet sand waving a fishing net at him. ‘We’re catching little fishes. Look! They’re all silvery.’
‘Sand eels,’ he tells her. ‘They make brilliant bait.’
But Ellie is peering intently into her bucket. He watches her tip them back out into the sea. Their silver bodies flash in the sunlight as they swim free.
‘My head aches,’ Simon says.
‘Have a rest under the umbrella,’ Nina says. ‘You look exhausted. Too much cycling in this heat. Drink some water too. There’s a bottle in the bag.’
He dozes in the shade, lets their voices wash over him and the sound of the waves lull him, and for a little while he can forget everything. He opens his eyes. Ellie in her little swimsuit is pouring wet sand through her fingers to make a fairy castle. Nina lolls on her towel, reading. There are bodies everywhere, soaking up the sunshine. Female bodies, mostly. The boys are all running and clambering on rocks and rushing in and out of the sea and yelling and digging water channels; skinny bodies that are all bone and sinew and muscle, busy doing things. He sees more clearly than ever the differences, male and female. It’s not just their bodies, it’s the way they are. The way they move and speak and everything.
‘Why don’t you swim?’ Nina asks.
‘I haven’t got my swimming stuff.’
‘I’m going home,’ he grunts at her. He hates the beach suddenly and ferociously.
‘Pleeeease stay,’ Ellie wheedles. ‘Make me one of those huge castles you do with the moat and everything. And a water channel. Please please please!’
Nina doesn’t say anything, but he can feel the pressure on him to stay and play with his sister like a hand pressing down on his head. It’s too strong; he relents. He takes Ellie’s spade and marks out the rough circle for a castle down near the water so they can watch the incoming tide invade it. The sand squidges between his toes, cools his hot feet. He immerses himself in the simple, familiar task of building a sandcastle and lets Ellie’s chatter shut out everything else. She’s so happy to have him play with her, she dances round him, getting under his feet.
‘Find some shells,’ he instructs her, ‘for the top.’
‘Smile for the camera,’ Nina says. They pose for her next to the finished castle, grinning. For some strange reason she has tears in her eyes.
The tide creeps up the beach. It’s the best time, when the waves first start to lick and curl round the outer defences of the castle, and they can still mend the small breaches with wet sand and shingle, ready for the next onslaught. You know what will happen: it’s unstoppable, but that doesn’t stop you pitting yourself against it, damming and shoring up in a race against the tide. When the final assault comes, and the inner keep is swamped and dissolved back to sand, it doesn’t feel like a defeat at all. Simon can’t help laughing and whooping at the delight of it, like the little boy he used to be, playing unselfconsciously on the sand.
‘Time to pack up,’ Nina says.
‘Just a little bit longer,’ Ellie pleads.
There are fewer people on the beach now. It’s the best time to swim, with the sea coming in over warmed sand. Simon strips off quickly down to his boxers and runs and shallow dives into the waves that are curling up the beach. Once he’s through the breaking point of the waves, he turns and lies on his back, floating. It’s unbelievably delicious to be wet and cool after such a day.
‘You come in too,’ he calls to Nina. ‘It’s really warm.’
She laughs. ‘Yeah, I believe you!’ But she starts to paddle out, and then a breaking wave catches her full on and drenches her. She squeals.
‘You might as well now!’ Simon shouts.
Ellie wails from the beach, left behind. Nina swims out to join Simon in the deep turquoise water. They haven’t done this for years. He splashes her and she yelps and splashes back and as the waves get bigger, they start to bodysurf on them, back towards the shore.
‘What about me?’ Ellie’s voice pipes out over the water.
‘Too dangerous for you,’ Nina splutters. ‘You have to be able to swim properly first, Ellie. But I’m coming out in a minute, I’m freezing!’
When she’s back on the beach drying herself, Simon turns back and swims, crawl, right out beyond the breaking waves, letting each roller lift and bounce his body as he crosses them.
‘Not too far out!’ Her voice is faint, he can hardly hear her.
He swims as far as he dares out into the bay. He thinks of all the sea beneath him, down and down. Not far beyond him is the thin line of white water which marks the rip. He floats a moment, watching the way the water boils and chafes on the current, and then he turns and swims back towards his mother and sister on the beach.
They’ve already packed everything away. Nina holds out a towel. ‘That was too far. Don’t, for my sake.’
He grins, shivering, exhilarated.
‘We’ll start walking. You can catch up on the bike, yes?’
‘Can’t I go on the bike? I’m tired,’ Ellie whines.
‘I’m not pushing you all the way up that hill,’ Simon says.
‘We’ll get you an ice cream, Ellie. You’ll be all right.’
In the end they all three have an ice cream. Simon leans the bike against the sea wall to eat his while Nina and Ellie plod on back through the town.
From where he’s sitting, he can see into the amusement arcade, and a gang of boys firing in the shooting range. He recognizes Rick Singleton. The eel in his stomach flips again. But Rick isn’t with his mates this time. He has one arm round a girl with long dark hair and the shortest shorts. He doesn’t notice Simon.
Simon cycles the long way home. The others are there already. Leah is sitting at the kitchen table.