26

Where my dad finds me

It turns out that experiencing a miracle is tiring. I must have fallen asleep, because it had got cold and the tide had gone far out. I stood up and brushed the sand out of my hair. I wrapped my arms around myself and headed toward the hill I had run down from Hilda’s house.

Charlie and Ben were probably getting worried. I had no idea how long I’d been away. I’d tell them I’d gone on a walk and got lost or something. I decided there and then that I wouldn’t mention the chat with my dead grandmother or seeing my mom. Ben would probably think I was cracking under the stress and Charlie wouldn’t be able to cope with the excitement of another miracle on top of Sheila the Savior Sheep.

As I made my way across the sand, I saw a figure unsteadily making its way toward me, waving a long stick in the air.

“Fred? Fred!”

“Dad?”

I broke into a run.

He tried to hobble a little faster on his crutches.

When I reached him I saw he looked tired around the eyes, but he’d shaved and he was even wearing a shirt instead of one of his grubby T-shirts.

“Dad, what are you doing here?”

“What am I doing here?” His voice quivered with anger and he pointed one of his crutches at me. “What in God’s name are you doing here?”

Before I could reply, he’d pulled me into him. “Don’t ever do that to me again, you hear? Don’t you ever run away from me.”

I wasn’t sure if he was hugging me or strangling me. I think maybe a little of both.

He grabbed my shoulders, his crutches dangling from his wrists, and stared me in the eyes. “If you run away from me again, I’ll hunt you down and I’ll find you. And when I find you, you’ll wish you’d run away better. You’ll wish you’d run away so good that if running away was a sport you’d want to be the world champion of it. Do you understand me?”

“Not really. You’re not making a whole lot of sense.”

“That is because I am feeling a lot of emotions right now, Fred.”

“Maybe focus on the happy emotion rather than the angry one?” I suggested.

“From now on, every second of every minute of every day, you tell me exactly what you’re doing. Where you are, who you’re with. I need to know everything. You go for a pee, I need to hear about it.”

The pee thing seemed excessive, but I wasn’t about to argue with a man on the edge, so I said, “Okay, Dad. I’ll tell you when I pee.”

“Okay. Good. Actually, maybe forget about the pee thing. But the other things . . . you need to tell me all the other things.”

“Am I going to be grounded forever?”

“Longer.”

I guessed that was fair enough.

His eyes softened a little. “Ben and Charlie told me about Mr. Froggley. Are you alright?”

I spotted Ben and Charlie hanging farther back on the beach with their parents. They held up their hands and I waved back.

“Yeah, Dad, I’m fine.”

“They’re good boys. They were worried about you racing off like that.”

“I’m sorry. Didn’t think.”

Dad shook his head and sighed. “I’m just glad we’ve found you safe and well, Fred.”

That was a point. How had he found me? “How did you get here from Andover so quickly?”

“Ben’s dad, Becky, Charlie’s mom, and me—we all headed to Wales as soon as that taxi driver showed up with that newspaper article, asking questions.”

“Newspaper article?”

“The one featuring Charlie Anderson, Barry’s 114th onion-eating champion.”

“Oh, that one.”

“Becky drove us all down last night to try and find you. We’d tracked you to Gileston and were speaking to a PC Mike when Ben called to tell us what had happened, and that you were upset.”

“I’m sorry if you were worried. I thought I could get here and back without you noticing.”

“Why did you come here, Fred?”

I looked toward the sea. The tide was even farther out now. “I thought there was something here I needed. Turns out I was wrong.”

He put his arm around me. “You’re cold. Let’s get back inside and get you warmed up. And then we can start discussing how things are going to change at home. I’ve been a bit of a lousy dad recently . . .” He held up his hand. “Now, don’t say I haven’t.”

I wasn’t going to, but I didn’t tell him that.

“I made a promise to your mom, and if your Grams was here and could hear me now, I’d make the same promise to her. And that promise is that I will look after you and love you until the day I die.”

I looked back out at the last bit of sunlight twinkling on the sea. “You know what, Dad? Maybe she is.” And then I looked back at him and said, “Do you think you could put off the whole dying thing for a bit though?”

“It’s a deal, if you promise to stay out of trouble.”

But before I could say I’d had enough trouble for a lifetime, a taxi pulled up at one end of the beach and trouble found me again.