We didn’t hear any more about the email. I think Mr Spears was freaked by the spider. His room was next to ours. Bryce had caught the huntsman in a plastic lunch box, and, after having a good look at it with a magnifying glass he had brought along, let it go.

He’d got his laptop back from Mr Spears and was setting up a new database for spiders, but Mr Spears didn’t need to know that part – yet!

It was Thursday and there was going to be an all-morning beach session with teachers at different activities and kids working their way around the stations. There was sandcastle building, beach cricket and volleyball for any kids who had had enough of the swimming, board paddling, beach flags practice and surfing.

Apart from Fisk, this had been the best school camp I’d ever been to. Bubba was looking much happier playing beach cricket, standing there with his toes in the water, waiting for a catch. He was wearing skimpy bathers and a legionnaire’s hat, with his shoulders, arms and face covered in white zinc. He was shouting orders to the other players but no one was paying attention. And Bubba didn’t care.

Beach cricket would have been fun, but I was keen to make a big impression with the ironman. I felt I had a chance. I was an okay runner and a pretty strong swimmer. I also wanted to nail Fisk and I knew he was going to be tough to beat.

I had a plan for the beach flags race and I was working out the details. It must have looked like I was deep in thought because Bryce came up to me during lunch (which was also at the beach) and asked what I was thinking about.

‘Beating Fisk to the flag.’

‘Where’s the flag?’

For all his brains, Bryce was pretty vague really.

‘You know, the flag. You have to grab it to win the beach flags.’

‘What do you want to win grotty old beach flags for, Mitch?’

‘You don’t win the flags, Bryce, you win the race.’

‘Right. And what’s your plan?’

‘Well, I think he’s faster than me, and he’s certainly bigger than me, so my plan is to get up faster and take off quicker and just guts it out to the end.’

‘What’s bigger got to do with it?’

‘Well, if it’s a close race, you can sort of bump the other person off-balance near the end so they can’t reach the flag.’

‘Oh,’ said Bryce, a frown on his face. I think he enjoyed a challenge. He was never going to run the race with his feet though – just his brains.

‘Well, it seems to me that there are two parts of the race we can work on here. Your start and your finish. You’re not going to get any faster between now and tomorrow, so we won’t bother about the middle, even though it represents approximately 95 per cent of the race.’

I was liking his logic.

‘Now for the start, all we need is a stopwatch and a patch of sand. For the end, we need something – or should I say, someone – else.’

For a moment I thought he was planning for Bubba to try shouting the word ‘dive’ for me, like Paisley had been doing for Fisk.

I followed his gaze over to an enormous mound of sand. The back of a head and a legionnaire’s cap were poking out at the top: Bubba. Buried. He’d given up on the cricket and gone in for a bit of beach burial. The only moving parts were on his face.

‘Bubbaman!’ we both yelled at the same time. He looked round at us with his usual stupid grin.

‘Get over here, you crazy guy!’

I knew what Bryce had in mind.