When I go into the shop Chaz is dashing around sorting out the magazine shelves and talking on his cell phone at the same time. He clicks off and hands me a chocolate bar and a paper to take home. I’m so hungry I start on the chocolate bar straightaway. So it takes me a few seconds to realize what Chaz is saying.
“You see,” he says, and he’s stabbing with his finger at a headline about asylum seekers.
I nod, my mouth full of fruit and nuts. “That’s why I moved to Hayling,” and I assume he’s just going on as usual about how marvelous it is to live down here. But then he says something which almost makes me choke.
“Too many foreigners in London. Better to live among your own, ain’t it?”
I stare at him but he just steams on without stopping for breath. “All them blacks and Hindus and what have yer, with their loud music and their goat curry and the smell. Something shocking.”
He gets his comb out and he’s combing back his thin hair and he raises his eyes to the ceiling as if to say, Me and you, Alix, we’re the same, and I’m just stunned.
I want to scream right back at him, You racist pig! I’m nothing like you! But I can’t speak.
My knees go weak just thinking about what he said. So I mutter, “Bye,” and race off on my bike.
I didn’t know Chaz was like that!
But then I didn’t know half the class thought Lindy’s Two Percent was funny.
I didn’t know that racist bullies pick on Samir in school before last week.
And look at the mess I got into with Kim because I assumed I knew what she was thinking about. Samir and I got it all wrong.
So how can you tell what anyone thinks about anything unless you go around asking them out loud?
Do I have to walk around for the rest of my life starting conversations with, “Do you hate asylum seekers? Because if you do we’d better stop right now.” Perhaps I should begin with everyone I know, or I think I know, first of all. Like Mrs. Saddler and Bert opposite and his divorced son and then there’s all the teachers in school and what about Kim’s mum and dad and her big sister, Jaxie.
My head’s beginning to ache with all these thoughts when I turn the corner into our road. Kim’s dad’s car is parked up outside our house. It’s still quite early, just gone nine, but that means Kim’s here. I slow down to a walk to give me time to think. I’ve already decided to bring Kim in on the secret. But I have to be careful to give nothing away to the adults.
Who can you trust anyway?
“Hey, Ali,” Kim calls out as I unlock the front door and go into the living room. Mum’s still in her dressing gown and Kim’s dad, Kevin, has a plate of buttered toast on his lap.
We hug and I say, “Let’s go upstairs and listen to some music.”
But Mum cuts in. “Just a minute, Alexandra. I want you to have some breakfast after that cold paper route. How’s Chaz?”
I don’t know what to say but Mum doesn’t notice, she just carries on, “Such a nice guy. Came all the way down from London to take over the newspaper store after Alf and Queenie sold up. Seems to like it here, I don’t know if he sails, does he, Alexandra?”
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.