When I finish there’s an awful silence in the room as Kim just sits there staring at me. What’s she thinking? What’s she going to do?
It would only take a nanosecond for Kim to rush downstairs and spill the whole story. Would she? Could she? And then she starts up.
“Oh my God! Are you mad? Crazy? Completely off your trolley? They’ll lock you up, lock up your mum, lock up . . . I don’t know, everyone, Trudy!” And she grabs Trudy by the collar and starts to cuddle her so fiercely, Trudy whimpers and struggles free.
“Quiet,” I hiss. I go to listen at the door. “They’ll hear.” But Kim’s really working herself up now.
“Hiding an asylum seeker! Do you know what they do about that? I mean, I don’t even know, but I can guess. Wait till your mum finds out about this, you’ll be grounded until you’re fifty!”
She stops and I pray she’s run out of steam, but then she sucks in her breath as though even worse thoughts have occurred to her and like a roller coaster starts all over again. “What do you even know about this man? Does he have a gun?”
“No, Kim, he doesn’t actually have anything.” But she isn’t listening.
“He could be a terrorist planning, I don’t know, a suicide bombing or something!”
“On Hayling Island?”
“Why not, no one would expect it down here. I mean, does he have a passport? How do you know where he is really from? How do we even know he is who he says he is?” she says, finishing triumphantly.
Finally she’s run out of steam, her eyes blinking now with the extreme effort of trying to impress on me the enormity of what I’ve fallen into.
“I know it’s possible,” I say in a sort of calm voice, although it keeps wobbling as I look into her frowning face. “But I believe Mohammed’s story. You’ve got to trust me.”
Kim’s staring at me with her wide, unblinking eyes, so at least I know she’s listening. I almost don’t want to stop talking for fear of what she might say next. What if she thinks we should go to the police? So I carry on.
“No one knows Mohammed is here, we just need a little more time, a day or two, that’s all I’m saying, so we can find someone to help him. Samir says there are all sorts of organizations. Samir’s been here for years and he knows . . .”
“Samir says . . . Samir knows . . .” mimics Kim, and her tone is really angry. “What the hell does he know about anything? He’s not even English.”
“So?”
“So how does he know how the system works? What about his parents, can’t they do anything?”
“They’re dead.”
“Dead?” and the frown begins to fade.
Kim’s world is very different from mine, full of her big, fun-filled family, none of whom have ever died. Not like me with Grandpa dead hardly a year and Dad gone off with the Gremlin, and absolutely nothing like Samir.
“They were tortured and killed by Saddam Hussein when Samir was nine,” I say quietly. “He was taken out of the country to England. He was in a horrible foster home for nearly a year. Then his brother and auntie came over so he lives with them now. Kim, it’s not safe for Mohammed to go back home to Iraq, and if we turn him in, that’s where he’ll end up. You have to believe it.”
I slump down on the bed. It feels as though I’m trying to carry an elephant up a mountain all by myself. Trudy climbs up onto my lap and tries to lick my face but I push her away. Then I look over at Kim and she’s wiping a tear from the corner of her eye.
The thing about Kim is she worries about stuff a lot, like her audition and not being late for school and always crossing on the green man, but she is the kindest, most generous person I know. In fact, all her family are the same and I don’t know how I could ever think that she wouldn’t at least want to help. But I really don’t know what I’d do if she walked away from this right now.
As she stands up, I’m terrified that’s just what she’s about to do.
I sit on the bed and watch her standing in the middle of the room and it’s like I can see her brain thinking through her mass of hair. Two whole minutes pass by on the clock radio and I’m practically holding my breath. Then Kim slips a glittery band off her wrist, shakes her hair and pulls it back tightly in a ponytail and slips the band on. My heart’s in my mouth as she starts to speak.
“Well, won’t hurt to meet your man, will it?” she says.
Yeeesss! I think, relief flooding through me.
“We have to take him some supplies,” I say.
“Does Trudy come too?”
“Of course, she’s chief refugee spotter!”
“Well, let’s hope she doesn’t spot any more,” says Kim grimly, and I lead the way out of the bedroom.
Kevin’s just leaving as we get downstairs and Mum’s dozing off so Kim and I can gather everything we need without any interference. Heaving bags of food, extra blankets, flasks of coffee and a fresh hot-water bottle, we let ourselves out quietly and walk around to the hut, Trudy scampering ahead.
It’s still very cold outside but the sky is bright. The tide’s beginning to turn, revealing a really good stretch of sand for running over. I can see a group of teenagers, older than us, hanging around the pillbox, drinking beer and smoking. I’m worried they’ll get curious if they see us crawling through the hole in the fence, but we manage to skip through while they’re distracted by a passing speedboat.
When we reach the hut I put my finger up to silence Kim. She nods but I can’t see her face behind the huge bag she’s carrying. What’s she really thinking? There’s no time to ask. I don’t want to startle Samir and get into an argument before we’re safely inside. So I call softly through the window and Samir’s face appears.
“Have you got any food?” he says immediately, and then he notices Kim. His face shuts down as if someone has pressed the remote control. He stands back as we climb in.
I feel like a traitor.