We’ve managed to make Eric’s dad look almost normal, arranging him casually against a bollard on the seafront, his Hawaiian shirt blending with the brightly coloured beachgoers, his socks and sandals quickly replaced by bare sandy feet. He doesn’t exactly look like someone from Miami, but he looks less like someone from planet Zog than he did ten minutes ago.
‘Ah – Mayor Threepwood,’ says the pointy woman, wiping a moustache of coffee foam from her top lip. ‘How excellent – now we’d like to make a presentation to you and Mr Frog if possible.’
‘Fogg,’ says Eric.
‘Fog?’ says the woman.
‘Mr Fogg,’ says Eric. ‘He’s called Mr Fogg.’
‘Oh,’ says the woman. ‘What a coincidence – so there’s Mr Frog and Mr Fog, how funny – ha, ha, ha.’ She laughs hard and high. I do hope she doesn’t have any children. No one needs a parent with a laugh like that.
‘Er – thank you,’ says Eric’s dad, holding tight to the bollard. ‘I’m sure Albert deserves it.’
The woman looks confused. ‘Albert?’
‘Mr Frog,’ I say quickly.
Jacob brings Mr Fogg up the steps and they stand solidly, waiting.
‘So – we’d like to present you, Mr Fog and Mr Frog, with this, the Best Beach award golden bucket and spade – hurrah! Ha, ha, ha.’ She holds the bucket out towards Eric’s dad.
Mr Fogg grabs it and gazes at it. It looks suspiciously like a plastic bucket and spade sprayed with gold spray paint but from the look on Mr Fogg’s face he’s seeing real twenty-four-carat gold. ‘Ah,’ he says. ‘Ah. That’s lovely that is. Ah …’
‘Good,’ says Eric’s dad, curling his toes into the sand. ‘Good.’
‘Is that it?’ says Jacob. ‘Is that what all the fuss has been about?’
The following morning, we sit on the sea wall, our legs dangling over the front. It’s a beautiful late spring day, with sunlight dipping on and off the water, seagulls wheeling over our heads and a gentle breeze playing over our toes.
It would all be perfect except Mum and Dad are with us, beaming and sharing out slightly stale chocolate that I recognise from Grandma’s larder.
‘It seems,’ says Mum, handing me a square of whitish chocolate, ‘that the hotel deal broke down. Something to do with mice.’
I go bright red. ‘Oh!’ I say.
‘Goodness,’ says Eric, turning redder than I’ve ever seen him. ‘Mice, did you say? We wouldn’t know anything about that – would we, Tom?’
I kick Eric. Sometimes you have to kick nice people just to stop them digging holes for themselves.
Mum doesn’t appear to notice. ‘And without the mayor to hold the negotiations together, Gogleplex walked away from the table, and so did the burger chain and the sofa people. They’ve all gone as fast as they arrived.’
‘Were they all sitting at one table?’ asks Jacob.
‘It’s a figure of speech,’ says Mum, just as Eric opens his mouth to say the same thing.
‘So,’ I say, ‘no multi-million-pound company is going to come to Bywater-by-Sea? Not even the sofas?’
‘Seems not,’ says Mum. ‘I mean, in one way it’s marvellous of course, but in another it’s a bit of a tragedy. Without the money they would have brought – the town’s in a pretty poor way.’
‘Mr Fogg did say something about that – but how come?’ asks Eric.
‘The mayor. He’s been squandering the town’s money right, left and centre – big lunches, consultants, five-year plans, all that sort of thing. It’s awful. It really is just as well that we won the Best Beach contest – at least it’ll bring in the holidaymakers.’
‘And at least Mr Fogg is happy,’ I say. ‘He won the competition; he’s got the bucket and spade.’
‘But that’s exactly the point. He’s retired – as of tomorrow – off to run a web-design business, so the only thing that makes any money is likely to stop until we can find some poor mug prepared to lug all those chairs in and out every day.’
‘I’ve been thinking,’ says Dad.
We turn to look at him.
‘I’m wondering if I’m cut out for school work – I mean, look at this.’ He waves airily over the beach and the sea. ‘I mean, who’d not want to be here all the time – renting out the chairs, fixing the pedalos – a simple life, but a happy one.’
‘Are you saying you’d like to take on Albert Fogg’s job?’ says Mum.
After a long pause, Dad says, ‘Yes.’