For two days, while Mum and Colin Threepwood bombard the town with contradictory but well-meaning slogans, like SMALL IS WHERE THE HEART IS and LONG LIVE THE BIG PRIVATELY OWNED HOTEL, it rains.
But on Wednesday the sun comes out.
I leave really early.
‘Don’t you want breakfast, Tom?’ asks Dad, waving a saucepan.
‘Er – no. I’ll grab some on the way,’ I say, leaving Dad in his pyjamas, making toast.
I race down the street, passing the milkman and the postman, aware that I have almost never seen the town this early in the morning.
I get to the beach at about the same time as Mr Fogg who is standing outside his store jangling his keys and looking anxious. ‘Ah, Tom,’ he says. ‘Just plucking up the courage.’
‘Could we leave the deckchairs off the beach?’ I say.
He shakes his head. ‘The beach inspectors are already in town. The chairs have to be out.’
‘But if the beach is wrong, then they’ll think we’re no good. We won’t win the contest and it won’t be sold off.’
Mr Fogg looks out through the tiny gap in his face behind which his eyes lurk. ‘No – not on my watch. So long as it’s still my job, I’ll do it properly,’ he says. ‘And besides – I want to win it.’
‘Really?’ I ask.
He scratches his bottom in reply.
‘Well, in that case, we’ll try to run a rota, so that one of us is here with you at all times. We’ll try to help you win it.’
‘Would you do that?’ he says, sounding almost hopeful.
‘Yes – er – no problem,’ I say.
It’s not ‘no problem’. It’s practically impossible. Even with my bike, coming and going from school is tricky.
‘So, class,’ says Mr Bell, ‘we’re going to look at another aspect of empathetic behaviour. Today we’re going to try to imagine what someone else is thinking. And I’ve brought someone small to help.’
He opens the door, and picks up a basket from outside. The basket quivers and then immediately starts wailing.
‘Yes, I’ve brought Gemma with me. Cootchy, cootchy, little bubble baby.’
Mr Bell blows bubbles at the baby and the baby smiles and blows bubbles back. ‘Snoodly, snoodly, snoodly.’ Mr Bell rubs noses with the baby.
At the back of the class, Jacob makes retching noises.
‘So,’ says Mr Bell, clearing his throat. ‘So, I’d like you to look into Gemma’s eyes and tell me what you think she’s thinking. How you think she’s feeling. Oh – where’s Eric Threepwood? He’d be good at this.’
‘Just gone to the toilet, Mr Bell, sir,’ I lie. ‘I’ll go and find him if you like.’
‘Or I will,’ says Jacob, glancing at the baby and her adoring fans and backing towards the door.
‘No, no, I’ll go,’ I say, lunging through it. I practically throw myself into the pasta maps of the London Underground and race out of the school and onto my bike.
I freewheel round the front of the castle and down to the beach. ‘Hi!’ I shout to Eric. He’s sitting outside Mr Fogg’s cave under a huge beach umbrella. ‘All quiet?’
Eric grabs his school bag and takes the bike off me. ‘Small moment with an inflatable dolphin and a granny but we won and it’s safely back in the cave.’
The rest of Wednesday passes quietly.
Thursday starts with drizzle.
All three of us go to school.
First we do art.
Miss Mawes looks at my ‘Woman in Blue’, turns it round, examines it upside down and says, ‘Very interesting to see you using Picasso’s mask techniques. Have you been reading up on them?’
I look at my biro scrawl. I couldn’t have made it worse if I’d tried.
‘Brilliant,’ says Miss Mawes, sailing off to examine Jacob’s masterpiece, ‘Woman in Red’.
Today there’s no baby, and we’re doing physics, but the cardigan’s back. Mr Bell has a kettle, a bowl of ice and a glass. He’s discussing thermal shock. It’s all fine, and then somehow he brings it round to empathy.
He pulls on yellow rubber gloves and safety goggles. ‘Stand back, everyone,’ he bellows, and then, as if he remembers himself: ‘Please.’
With great concentration he boils the kettle. ‘So if we were being kind to our glass, we’d warm it up slowly – but if we want to shatter it – we plunge it from hot to cold.’ Which is exactly what he does, and the glass pings apart in a not terribly interesting way, mixing shards of glass with blocks of ice.
‘Anyway,’ says Mr Bell, staring into the bowl hopefully as if something spectacular could happen at this late stage. ‘Anyway.’ He sighs, peeling off the rubber gloves and sitting sideways on the desk. One leg just touching the floor. ‘I’ve managed to get my hands on this wonderful computer game.’
Jacob, who has been staring into the bowl of ice waiting for something to happen, wakes and looks around. ‘Did he say computer game?’
‘Yes, young Jacob. Computer game. It’s called Cuddle or Destroy, and it’s designed to help you make the right choices in life. So who’s first on the computers then?’
Jacob gets in first, of course. ‘What do I do here then?’ he says, as a small green lizard-alien thing races towards him.
‘Presumably you have to decide whether to cuddle or –’ starts Eric, but before he’s even finished the sentence, Jacob has annihilated the alien, leaving a green smear on the virtual landscape and losing a life.
‘I get it,’ says Jacob. ‘I should have killed him the moment I saw him.’
I glance out of the window. The drizzle has dried up and there’s an ominous patch of blue sky over the playground. ‘I’d better go,’ I say to Eric.
He nods and patiently explains to Jacob the meaning of the word ‘cuddle’.
The beach is quiet. Full of holidaymakers, and one or two people with clipboards, but no sign of marauding beach furniture.