Trudy is straining on her leash and whining while the man rages on and then suddenly Samir starts speaking. I can’t understand a word he’s saying either.
“Hey!” I call out, which is really hard because my teeth are chattering like a road drill. “What’s he saying?” It feels as though my brain has turned to ice. Maybe I’m scrambling up everything I hear.
But they both ignore me and then just as suddenly they stop. Samir stands up, his head and shoulders slumped.
“Samir, w-w-w-what’s going on?” I say.
Samir just turns and walks to the water’s edge, not noticing how his shabby sneakers begin to get soaked again. I stand up too, looking down at the man. He’s closed his good eye and his whole body is shaking with cold. He won’t last much longer out here. We can’t carry him to the cottage and I can’t run around and get Mum with the car because of her broken leg.
“We have to call an ambulance.”
Samir doesn’t move a muscle. He stands silently staring out to sea. Is he mad? “Samir, he’ll die out here,” I say. “It’s freezing!”
I’m pulling on my coat and sneakers as I speak. My fingers are too numb to tie the laces and I can’t even do the zip on my jacket. Samir has wrapped his denim jacket around the man’s shaking shoulders, but he still doesn’t seem to get it.
“Samir!” I say firmly, but he still ignores me. “I’m going home to phone for help.”
“No!” Samir turns and yells at me. Then he’s running back over the beach, his sneakers squelching. He catches his foot in a trail of heavy seaweed and, stopping to untangle it, he calls out in a softer voice, “No ambulance, no police, you mustn’t even tell your mother.”
My mother? Why not? But I find myself staring into Samir’s eyes and there’s that pleading look again, tugging away at me like the currents.
I shake my head to clear it and say furiously, “What are you going on about? He is going to get hypothermia!”
“Yes, yes, I know, he’s really cold and he hasn’t eaten for three days . . .”
“How do you know? He can’t even speak clearly.”
“Because he speaks my language: Arabic. Alix, he is an illegal immigrant, like Mr. Spicer talked about in class yesterday. He is here without permission.” Samir’s voice drops to a whisper as he says these last words and he looks nervously around in case someone’s listening.
Arabic! Samir and Naazim are from some Arab country and so is this stranger.
It’s very hard to think straight with my brain shuddering and my teeth chattering and my whole body shaking with cold.
“What do you mean? Why is he here and why on earth did he jump into the sea on a day like this? He could have been killed or worse.” Worse, there’s that word again.
I start to run up the sand dune to see if anyone else is around. What would I say if one of the neighbors went past right now?
Samir is calling up to me in a really desperate voice. “We have to help him. He’s run away from his country because they wanted to kill him, you know, like Mr. Spicer told us. He’s an asylum seeker, only in his case the government, the Home Office, they refused him. So he’s an illegal immigrant . . . ,” and his voice fades away.
Illegal. Oh God, and then I remember Lindy’s mocking voice, “Two percent too many.” She doesn’t even think Samir should be here, what would she say about our drowning man?
“We have to help him,” pleads Samir. “His name’s Mohammed and he’s hurt. He was tortured . . .”
“What?”
“Tortured, like my . . .” But he doesn’t finish. His eyes cloud over as he looks up at me.
“Help me to hide him, Alix. Please. Just for a couple of days.”
Hide him? Hide a stranger? I look back down to where the man is lying all scrunched up on the sand, his body shaking and twitching. His face has gone a deathly pale and his lips are literally blue. The bruised eye looks so swollen; someone must have really punched him hard. What did he do to deserve that? My feet feel as though they are sinking into the sand, and soon my whole body will be stuck fast like in a swamp and I won’t be able to run away even if I want to.
“Alix, we don’t have much time, someone will come.” Samir’s voice breaks into my thoughts. The man is groaning and shaking and Samir is pleading and the mist is clearing quite quickly now. We’ll be discovered very soon or our man will die of the cold. What should I do?
The man is shivering worse than ever. I have to make a decision. “We have to get him to the hospital, let’s get him to the bus stop, okay?” I say.
“No, we can’t! You don’t understand!” says Samir, and he’s sounding completely desperate. “He’s here illegally and the hospital will tell the police and then he could get deported straightaway. Trust me, Alix, we have to hide him, now!”
“But surely they’ve only got to look at him,” I say.
“And what if they won’t listen? Remember what Mr. Spicer said? He could be sent back and tortured or killed. We have to try to save him, please, Alix. It’s a matter of life and death.”
Life and death. For a second Grandpa’s voice whispers in my ear, telling me his story of the war. “It’s good to be strong when you’re needed,” he’d say. Am I strong enough for this?
I can hardly bear to meet Samir’s eyes. I look over at the man lying in a heap on the ground. We have to do something, and if we’re not going to the hospital then we’ve got to take him somewhere a bit warmer at least.
Samir is tugging the man to his feet and they almost fall down again. I reach out and grab the man and before I can think anymore about it I’ve got one arm around our very illegal person and I’m helping him along the beach to God knows where.
If we’re caught, we’ll all be in deep trouble. Could I be deported for this? Where on earth would they send me?
As we stumble past the Lifeboat Station the mist has almost gone and there are now a few people on the main beach. I can see two dog walkers, at least one of whom I recognize, a jogger coming straight toward us and three weekend anglers down at the water’s edge.
“Quickly, Alix. Where to?” asks Samir in a worried voice. I look around, feeling a bit panicky. Where do you hide on a Hayling beach? It’s just wide open spaces as far as you can see, and it’s miles to the rows of beach huts where we might be able to hide him, although they’re usually locked. “Alix!” says Samir more urgently, shifting his grip under our man’s drooping arm.
Then I remember the little hut on the Nature Reserve. There’s a hole in the fence that me and Kim used to crawl through when we were in Junior School. We pretended we were Lara Croft acting out the games we played on Kim’s computer. I loved Lara’s cute khaki shorts and double gun holsters. I really wanted to be her when I was ten. Lara Croft could beat any enemy, overcome any obstacle. We used to practice kickboxing and ambush each other around the hut.
Lara Croft isn’t scared of anything.
“This way,” I call out, and start to tug everyone forward. Our man’s so weak now I’m terrified he’ll collapse on the beach in front of the dog walkers and the fishermen.
Pushing and pulling, constantly tripping over Trudy and her leash, we manage to get through the hole in the fence and past some very prickly bushes to the door of the hut. There’s just one problem; a great big new padlock gleaming on the weather-beaten door.