Keith struggled awake.
A noise. On the roof of the caravan. Drumming. Rumbling. Thumping.
Snakes fighting?
A crocodile demanding to be let in?
Suddenly he knew what it was.
Rain.
Rain? Less than twelve hours ago, at the picnic, it had been searingly hot and there hadn’t been a cloud in the sky.
He sat up in the darkness and pulled the curtain aside. Water was running down the outside of the window.
Think.
It could be a lawn sprinkler that had come on by mistake. Perhaps that couple in the other caravan had had another fight and one of them had switched on the lawn sprinkler to sprinkle the other.
Keith peered over towards the shower block floodlight. In the arc of light he could see millions of drops of water falling from much higher up than a lawn sprinkler could sprinkle.
Rain.
Panic gripped him in the chest.
How could he do anything about rain?
Even if Tracy’s parents were the best actors in the world they couldn’t keep Mum and Dad shut up in their living room with the curtain drawn and the telly turned up for ever.
Sooner or later Mum and Dad would step outside and there it would be. Grey skies. Grey buildings. Rain.
And gradually, drip by drip, Mum’s forehead would pucker up and Dad’s mouth would droop and the customers would stop coming and the shop would go broke and they’d be reduced to living on river banks and fighting with crocodiles over scraps of rotting takeaway chicken . . .
Keith clenched his fists.
Think positive.
If the sky was blue twelve hours ago, this must be a freak storm that’s blown in from somewhere close that has rain. New Zealand. China. Somewhere like that.
And if it’s blown in, thought Keith, stands to reason it’ll blow out again. Probably by morning. When Mum and Dad wake up, the sky’ll probably be blue again.
Not probably, it will be.
And Mum and Dad’ll never know anything about it.
As long as they don’t wake up now.
Keith held his breath and listened for their breathing. He couldn’t hear anything except the drumming of the rain.
He felt on the floor next to his bed and found the candle and matches Mum had left there in case of emergency.
The candle flame lit up the caravan with a flickering yellow light.
Keith slipped out of bed and gently pulled aside the curtain that hung between Mum and Dad’s bed and his.
Mum and Dad were both asleep.
Keith silently thanked the traffic of South London for turning them into such heavy sleepers.
But the rain on the roof was getting louder.
He couldn’t chance it.
He found Mum’s make-up bag, pulled out some tufts of cotton wool, rolled them into little balls, and carefully, gently, holding his breath, pushed one into one of Mum’s ears.
She stirred slightly but stayed asleep.
He eased one into her other ear.
Dad was harder to do because he was on the other side of the bed.
Keith leaned over Mum, praying she wouldn’t wake up and scream.
The first ball fell out of Dad’s ear. Too small. He made bigger ones and eased them in.
Done.
He straightened up, heart pounding.
Now, check to make sure all the windows are closed.
That’s when he remembered.
The side window in the shop.
He’d left it open so the shop wouldn’t be too hot on Monday morning.
A night of pounding rain and the shop could be awash. Electrical wires could short-circuit. There could be a fire.
Another one.
He stood there, sweating, in the flickering candlelight.
I’ll have to do it, he thought. I’ll have to go and shut that window.
He was drenched to the skin before he got to the bottom of the caravan steps.
So much for Mum’s showerproof raincoat.
He clasped it round him and sloshed across the caravan park, slipping in the mud, eyes almost closed against the rain that beat on his head and shoulders like stones.
Blimey, he thought, this is worse than Worthing.
Then he reached the road.
For a moment Keith thought he’d been slammed in the back with a plank of wood, then he realised it was wind, screaming at him out of the darkness.
He staggered across the road and was only able to stop when he came up against the rough brick wall of the milk bar.
The rain was coming at him sideways now, and it felt like it was going to rip Mum’s showerproof raincoat to shreds.
Keith squinted towards the beach.
All he could see were huge black waves pounding in, and foam being torn off them by the wind. Forget Worthing, he thought, this is worse than Scarborough.
He started to edge his way towards the shop at the other end of the street, eyes almost closed, the wind flattening him against the buildings as he struggled along.
Just past the hardware store he took another painful squint at the beach.
And saw the palm trees.
No longer were they leaning gracefully over the sand, they were thrashing around, fronds flailing in the black sky.
Suddenly it hit him.
Coconuts.
Fortunately it was only the thought that hit him. The coconut itself, the first of them, slammed against the post office wall in front of him and exploded.
Keith saw that the road was littered with coconuts. He heard others smashing into wood and glass.
Run, he thought. Leg it. Go back.
Then he remembered the shop.
If he didn’t save the shop, there was no point in going back.
He hunched over and put his left arm up between him and the thrashing palm trees and edged forward.
A car with only one headlight and no windscreen went slowly past and the driver shouted something at him but Keith kept his head down and kept going.
Another coconut exploded against the wall in front of him.
A rubbish bin flew past his head.
Then he realised he was outside the swimwear boutique which meant the next shop was theirs. He peered ahead. There it was.
He heard a screeching, groaning noise above him. He looked up and saw that the metal roof of the swimwear boutique was flapping around like a bedspread. It was coming down, towards him.
He flung himself against the wall as the sheets of tin crashed onto the road and were hurled along it, sparks flying.
And then suddenly the sheets of metal were in the air again and smashing, two and three at a time, into the front of the Paradise Fish Bar.
Keith watched the front of the shop disappear as the wind picked up the shattered glass and splintered wood and twisted metal and whipped them away.
He stared, numb, as the next gust, thundering into the open front of the shop, blew out every other window in the building.
He stood leaning against the swimwear boutique wall until the feeling came back into his body.
Paradise, he thought, looking at the dark, howling beach.
Rain and sand stung his eyes and he didn’t care.
Twelve thousand miles, five airlines, seventy-three hours.
And all you had to do was make us happy.
‘Thanks a lot, paradise,’ he yelled, ‘thanks a bleeding lot.’
He yelled it again, screaming it into the wind with great sobs.
He was still yelling it when the real plank of wood slammed into him and everything went black.