I slip out of the back door and through the model village. Mum and Grandma have been working hard. All the hedges are trimmed ready for the summer season and they’ve laid fresh gravel and cut the grass.
Mum’s had loads of time to help Grandma this time because the whole magician thing has gone wrong. We moved here because Mum and Dad wanted to be stage magicians. They gave up perfectly good jobs, a perfectly nice house and some perfectly lovely friends to move here, to be with Grandma, so that we could all live next to the model village. The plan was that they would become stage magicians, tour the country, do the odd cruise, get a telly series, write books and become household names. The reality turned into a free show at the town hall, three children’s parties, a sixtieth birthday party, a disastrous ruby wedding anniversary and the disappearing cabinet finale, where they actually disappeared someone. Not even enough to pay for the rabbit food.
Which is why Dad is now working at the school and Mum is looking for another career.
I just hope she’s not thinking of working at the school too.
I stumble through the model village, drop down to the Dingly Dell Crazy Golf and clamber over the gnome-covered wall onto the promenade. Huge puddles stretch over the tarmac and under the glass shelters that line the seafront but there’s no one hiding inside them. It’s simply too wet.
I stop under the amusement-arcade awning and study the beach.
It looks utterly deserted. Out at sea some moored yachts bounce on the waves and in the harbour others jostle and groan against the jetties. A couple of people fight their way along the pier, brollies flipped inside out and coats flapping.
Perfect.
Breaking free of the amusement arcade I dash over the tarmac and race down to the beach steps, water splashing up my trouser legs every step of the way.
Vast heaps of seaweed have been thrown up onto the shore since yesterday and for a moment it looks as if everything has been swept from the beach by the storm, but then I see Albert Fogg, the man who looks after the deckchairs, crouching at the back under an oilskin and a huge umbrella.
Flip.
He’s manning the deckchairs. As if on a day like this you’d have to.
I slow down and saunter over the pebbles. A length of seaweed wraps itself round my foot and I spend an unnecessarily long time untangling it, taking the opportunity to have a good look at Mr Fogg.
Normally he wears a navy-blue sweater and the oldest, most faded jeans I’ve ever seen. His skin is the colour of old crab claws and his eyes are hidden so deeply in the crevasses of his face that I couldn’t say if they had a colour at all.
Today he’s wearing the full yellow sailor waterproofs and, despite the rain, seems to be washing a deckchair down with a watering can.
Snatches of his song escape through the rain. ‘Put him in the scuppers …’
He fills the watering can from the beach tap, scuttles back over the shingle and goes at the deckchair with a broom. ‘Take that – and that!’ he says and then bursts into song again. ‘What shall we do with the drunken sailor …’
I straighten up and wander past. It’s hard to look casual when there’s a gale blowing. When I’ve reached the end of the beach, I shelter under the pier and look back.
I can’t work out if this is the deckchair that attacked Mr Bissell. They all look exactly the same, but then why would Mr Fogg single out a lone deckchair for a scrub when he must have a shed full of them?
Above me, the pier whizzes and pings as the unplayed machines try to attract attention. Someone’s feet sound on the boards and then thump along to the seafront. The same person pulls their coat close round them and marches along to the set of steps nearest to the beach tap. They trot down the steps, and start to talk to Mr Fogg.
I can’t see who it is. They’re wearing too many waterproofs. But I can hear some words. ‘Not … safe … secret … newspapers … not a bean left … important … vital.’
Mr Fogg nods and pulls his cap.
The wrapped-up person struggles up the steps and into the town, disappearing into the storm.
Mr Fogg opens a door behind him. He places his empty watering can inside and I see a cave that seems to go deep into the solid front of the seafront. He locks the door again and folds the deckchair flat, leaving it lying against the front of the store.
I wait, trying to make myself as thin as one of the pier supports, until he rolls up the steps, along the sea wall and in through the front door of the Trusty Tramper Café.
It’s not easy to tiptoe on pebbles, and frankly it’s not actually necessary in a gale, but I do tiptoe until I’m over by the deckchair and hidden under the lee of the sea wall.
There’s nothing to see. I’m pretty sure it’s the same one, as there’s a tear in the cloth where I seem to remember Mr Bissell turning and attempting to bite it. Otherwise it looks disappointingly ordinary.
Experimentally I try to lift it. It’s quite heavy, but not impossible and I half carry, half drag it along the beach to the very end.
Which is where it gets difficult.
The moment I stick my head over the parapet the wind doubles in strength and seems to change direction so that I’m blown back towards the sea.
‘Stupid thing,’ I say, pulling it against me. But the wind catches the fabric and tugs both me and the deckchair back down to the beach so that I have to lean the deckchair against the wall and stop to breathe.
Peeling the hood from my face, I let the rain beat on my skin for a minute. This seems ridiculously hard work. Surely it can’t be this difficult to move a deckchair?
I lift it again, and again, but I can’t quite leave the beach with it.
What?
I make a third attempt, this time with all my strength, but the deckchair becomes heavier than me. I can’t actually lift it and when I let go the wind takes it back onto the pebbles.
I stand on the steps, looking down at it.
I’d swear it’s got a Tilly face on. Smug.
The rain beats on my head. I am now actually getting wet inside my waterproof, and I am officially cross. How on earth am I going to get a sample of this deckchair to Eric?
Back on the beach I check to see if any of the joints are loose. Sadly they aren’t.
So I search the tar blobs and fish heads scattered along the beach for something sharp. I find a mussel shell, a biro lid and a piece of slate.
The biro lid bends and the slate shatters but the mussel shell lets me prise the tiniest splinter of wood from the chair, and cuts me a thread of the cloth.
‘Ha!’ I say to the deckchair. ‘Ha! Serves you right.’
The deckchair falls flat on the beach and the splinter and the piece of cloth whisk from my hand and vanish into the wind.
I’d swear that the deckchair laughs.
‘OK then. If that’s the way you want to play it.’
I hold up my right hand, form an O with my thumb and my forefinger and …
Click.