The Boy Who Hit Play Read online

‘She’s switched her phone off.’ She bangs it on the table.

  I stare at her. ‘Your mum knows Floyd?’

  ‘No. I dunno. I don’t think so. Who’s Floyd?’

  ‘Lloyd’s brother. He’s trying to kill us.’

  ‘He hasn’t tried to kill us.’ Dad hovers behind us.

  ‘Why are you sticking up for him?’ I turn round.

  ‘I’m not!’ Dad puts his hands up.

  ‘How come you and your mum speak in English?’

  ‘My dad was English, so she makes me keep it up. She lived there for a while.’ Lene kicks her foot into a cupboard.

  ‘Why would Floyd offer your mum money?’

  ‘I have no idea. Is he rich?’

  ‘Yeah, but …’ I rub my head.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He likes to keep it for himself.’

  ‘Maybe Lloyd doesn’t want to be found,’ Dad says.

  ‘Why? He had an argument with Kirsten last night. She said he was my family.’

  Dad goes white. ‘That could mean lots of things,’ he says and rubs his neck.

  I think of point six on how to know when people are lying.

  Self grooming.

  What does he know that I don’t?

  ‘And now she’s sent him away.’

  Lene pulls my sleeve. ‘The goat needs milking,’ she says and drags me outside.

  We huddle round the back of the long red shed.

  ‘You got a rucksack right?’

  I nod.

  ‘Pack it and meet me by the back door.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘Clothes, waterproofs, spare stuff,’ she says. ‘We can go in my boat.’

  I wipe a cobweb off my hair. ‘You’ve got a boat?’

  ‘Everyone has boats. We learn it when we’re like five.’

  I keep staring.

  ‘I’m sea-scout sailing champion,’ she says. ‘Under fourteen category. Trust me or what?’

  ‘OK.’ I nod.

  The goat eats the bottom of my jumper.

  ‘This is Nancy,’ Lene says. ‘She really does need milking.’

  Away

  Lene leads Nancy along by the collar and her bell clangs.

  We shuffle into a red shed.

  She gets out a wooden stool and sits on it. ‘Can you get some dandelions?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They’re her favourite.’

  I go outside and stuff my pockets full.

  When I get back I hear the rhythm of the milk squirting against the side of a bucket. I hold a dandelion near Nancy and she swipes it out of my hand.

  I rub her horn bumps. She seems to like it. She bites my pocket for more dandelions.

  ‘If Floyd tried to kill you, offering Mum money can’t be good. We need to find her.’

  ‘Money to do what?’ I say.

  ‘Exactly,’ she says.

  ‘I hate secrets.’

  ‘I know what it’s like. Not to know stuff. I know how it feels to be stopped.’ Lene says. She doesn’t stop squirting. ‘My mum blames herself for my dad dying. So she never talks about it.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘They had a row, then he left and drove into a tree.’ She wipes her hair out of her face with the back of her hand. ‘Sometimes she just feels like a brick wall.’

  I think of the mirror dream, reaching in like there’s secrets stuck behind it. ‘I know what you mean.’

  Nancy guzzles all the dandelions and Lene fills the bucket.

  She pours the milk into a jug and then filters it into glass bottles which she puts in a freezer.

  We walk back into the house.

  Dad’s chainsawing logs out the front with Kirsten. I don’t look at them.

  We walk in and split into our own rooms.

  When I come down Lene is already waiting out the back. I don’t know how she can be that fast.

  ‘Stay there,’ she whispers. ‘I’m going in for food.’

  I watch through the crack of the open door as Lene slips in like a cat and stashes stuff off the shelves into her bag. Biscuits, crisps, crackers, a tube of pink stuff out of the fridge and two bottles of water.

  Kirsten comes in and Lene slides round the side of the fridge.

  I flatten my back against the wall.

  Kirsten gets a pack of biscuits and leaves.

  Lene climbs on top of the flatbed freezer and pulls dried fish down from a hook in the ceiling. The hook goes through the eyehole. She winks at me. ‘You like tørfisk?’

  I haven’t tried it but I’m guessing husky dried-out fish meat isn’t gonna be my favourite.

  I pull a dead-fish face.

  She puts her finger on her lips and tries not to laugh.

  ‘Let’s go.’ She climbs down, stuffs the fish in her bag and we turn away from the house, towards the sun.

  Happy?

  We walk down the path and fork right up a hill. The track zigzags up and up.

  The sun makes the grass glow emerald-green. I feel like we’re going up into the sky. Which spreads out turquoise. We reach the summit and look down at a small bay, a small beach and a jetty.

  Oystercatchers waddle along. Pipping.

  I like their beaks.

  Lene points down at her boat bouncing, red, white and blue. ‘Don’t laugh at the name,’ she says. ‘It’s bad luck to change it.’

  ‘How do you even get a boat?’ We walk along the ridge and drop down. I shield the sun out of my eyes.

  ‘I got it for my birthday one summer. When I was eight,’ she says. ‘Off Kirsten. So I could sail myself over that summer, every summer.’ She kicks a rock over the edge of the path. ‘So I could sail over whenever I needed.’

  ‘Do you need to?’

  She keeps walking. ‘Sometimes,’ she says. ‘Sometimes I need a break.’

  ‘From what?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You haven’t met my mother,’ she says.

  I think of the voice on the phone. The way she hung up.

  ‘This is my bay.’

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ I say. It totally is.

  I look at the boat bobbing in the glittery water. It’s wooden with a small cabin, with the wheel and windscreen at the front and round windows on the sides.

  We clank down the jetty. The water slaps the wood.

  I read the side:

  Den Glade Gullfisk

  What does that mean?’

  ‘The Happy Goldfish,’ she says. ‘I told you not to laugh.’

  Sperm Whales Can

  Swallow Whole Boats

  We do laugh though. We laugh all the way till I chuck my bag in the back of the boat and two hard blue eyes pop up and chuck it back on the jetty.

  ‘Lene,’ I yell, ‘watch out!’

  But Lene’s picked up an oar out of the front and is holding it over her head. ‘Get out of my boat!’ she says and swings it at his face.

  The shadow man ducks and sidesteps. She swings again. He grabs on to the end of the pole. I grab on to Lene. It’s our strength against his. ‘Your orders are not to leave this island,’ he pulls us in. Our feet skid along the wood.

  I think about the hotel. Don’t defend. Attack. Attack!

  I let go of the oar. The force of it snaps him backwards. Lene flies into the Gullfisk. She stands up and passes me another oar.

  I bring it over my head and smack it down on to his. He falls over sideways, eyes shut.

  ‘Pull the rope.’ Lene points.

  I pull the boat into the jetty and climb in. ‘Did I kill him?’

  Lene kicks his ankle. He groans. ‘No,’ she says. ‘Take his legs.’

  I grab his legs and she takes his arms and we drag him out of the boat on to the jetty.

  ‘Who is he?’ Lene squats next to his face.

  ‘Floyd’s detective,’ I say and pull my compass out of his jacket.

  I stuff it back into my pocket.

  We roll him on to his front and pull his
arms together and Lene goes into the boat and comes out with a piece of blue twine and a knife. ‘Will it hold him?’ I look at the mooring rope. It’s loads thicker.

  ‘I’m not cutting the mooring rope,’ she says and looks at me like I just killed her hamster.

  ‘What if he comes after us?’

  ‘He won’t if you tie it tight enough.’ Lene slices the twine in two. We take half each and do his arms and legs. I tie as tight as I know how and roll him on to his side.

  ‘In case he’s sick,’ I say. I know that much from PSHE first aid.

  If he chokes on sick he dies. If he dies I’ll go to prison, won’t I?

  Lene pulls the Gullfisk in to the jetty and we chuck our bags in the back. I jump in. She unties the rope and jumps in too.

  ‘If he’s touched anything in here I’ll go back and kill him myself,’ she says and checks over everything with her fingers.

  ‘Won’t they notice we’re gone?’ I step into the cabin.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Dad and Kirsten.’

  ‘Let them notice. They’re keeping secrets from us, right?’ She looks back at the jetty. ‘Did they know he was here?’

  ‘No!’ I tap my elbow. Why would Kirsten send Lloyd away otherwise? ‘I don’t think so.’ I look at the man. Not moving. ‘On the way here Floyd shot at us. I thought he wanted to scare us away.’

  ‘From what?’ We pull life jackets over our heads and clip them on. She starts the engine. It smells of diesel.

  The boat buzzes underneath us.

  ‘I thought he wanted us to go home. Lloyd said he wanted us to give up. Now he’s disappeared. It doesn’t make sense.’

  A light on the dashboard flashes and I think about pressing it. I don’t. Brain-flick control.

  ‘He hasn’t disappeared.’ Lene grits her teeth. ‘He’s with my mum.’

  I tap the dashboard. ‘Hmmn.’

  We bob out to sea like a little petrol-driven cork. The waves are shallow and rolling. I try to roll with them and not to feel sick.

  I wonder what he wants.

  Why do people offer people money?

  Blackmail?

  People try to get money for that. Not give it.

  ‘Maybe she knows something he doesn’t want us to know. Maybe he’s trying to pay her off?’

  ‘Like what?’

  I get Lene’s bag off the floor. ‘You hungry?’

  She nods.

  I’m starving.

  Lene gets out a packet of crackers and squirts pink stuff all over. It looks like brains.

  ‘You want to try some?’

  I pull a face.

  ‘Everyone makes it here. The kids chop out the tongues.’

  I stick mine out and get out a big bag of crisps in the shape of lighthouses.

  ‘Kirsten said something last night.’ I eat a handful. ‘She said Lloyd should have told me the truth.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘She didn’t say.’ White water bubbles over the front of the boat. We bounce down.

  ‘People are weird about my dad too,’ Lene says. ‘No one ever wants to talk about him. Sometimes people just don’t like the past.’

  ‘Do you know what he looked like?’

  ‘We have one photo.’ She pulls a locket out of her shirt and drops it back down. ‘I like to carry him around.’

  ‘I’ve got my dad’s dad’s dad’s compass,’ I say and pull it out of mine. ‘Well, I have now.’ It’s good to have it back.

  ‘At least you have a dad,’ Lene says. ‘You actually have two.’

  We stand there crunching and looking out at the water squished up together like orange balloons in a fish tank. I think about that. I have two dads. It’s true.

  ‘What’s that?’ I say and point at rolling black humps that bob up and down. Water squirts up as they rise. I go out through the cabin and lean over the edge. I see five black and white backs dipping and rolling.

  Lene yells from the cabin, ‘That’s a pod of orcas.’

  ‘Nice.’

  She looks over her shoulder. ‘If they come this way, they could roll us over, or smash the boat.’

  I look down and feel the power in their bodies.

  PSHHHHH

  PSHHHHH.

  I see one eye. It turns away.

  I watch them drift off into the blue.

  ‘They’re going,’ I say and wobble-walk back into the cabin.

  ‘Sperm whales can swallow whole boats.’ She switches on the radio. ‘Not that they want to – just that their mouths are so big they can.’

  I look at the black backs dipping away.

  ‘Why are there so many?’

  ‘Orcas always swim in pods,’ Lene says. ‘They always stick with their families.’

  Messed Up

  ‘Human families are messed up.’ I tip out the last of the crisps.

  ‘True.’ Lene stares out the windscreen.

  I look out at the water.

  You’re his family.

  What did Kirsten mean?

  You have two dads.

  It’s true. Isn’t it?

  Something clicks in my head. Something dark and weird.

  And scary.

  I try to push the idea out.

  But it won’t go.

  What if she wasn’t being metaphorical?

  What if she actually really meant it?

  I play back over our lives like a film. In flashbacks.

  When we got here Kirsten acted weird with Lloyd.

  The truth finds everyone, she said. The truth finds everyone in the end.

  Why is Lloyd always around?

  Why did he pay for the trip in the first place?

  I go further back. Right to the beginning.

  I’m paying, Lloyd said. It’s the least I can do.

  He shook my Babygro. He knew the note was meant to be in it. How?

  He’d only know it if he put it there.

  He’d only put it there if he knew it himself.

  He’d only put it there if it was him.

  It was him who left me.

  The Ks match.

  Because he wrote it.

  The truth hits me in the face.

  I look at Lene. ‘What if Lloyd’s my dad?’ I say.

  She spits out a crisp. ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Is it?’ I read about people whose sisters turned out to be their mums because they couldn’t cope. So their grandma brought them up. Together. Maybe Lloyd couldn’t cope?’

  I think about

  ‘Sometimes Lloyd can’t cope with being Lloyd. That’s why he comes round ours.’

  We pull into an island that looks like a giant dragon’s tooth coming up out of the water. Like something out of Jurassic World. ‘I don’t think it’s ridiculous,’ I say. Eagles glide in on the thermals. ‘I think it makes everything make sense.’

  Say It

  ‘Right,’ Lene says. ‘So why is he offering Mum money?’

  ‘Maybe she knows, maybe he’s paying her not to say?’

  ‘My mum knows Lloyd?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘How would I know?’

  ‘Don’t take it out on me.’ She switches off the radio.

  ‘I’m not.’

  Other boats go by. They fly flags and wave and honk and whoop. Their music drifts in and out.

  I hear the music booming from the main stage. I look up. There’s lights even though it’s light. You can see the colours.

  Pink.

  Purple.

  Green.

  We pull into the harbour. The jetties are thick with boats. Masts and decks and sails and engines. Hundreds of them.

  We have to steer and squeeze in tight.

  Lene hops out. I pass the rope over and she squats and ties us to the jetty.

  People are having boat parties. Smoke drifts over. Girls are jumping in and climbing out of the water and the air is full of screaming and singing.

  The bass from the ma
in stage digs into my ribs. It’s nice.

  We look at the sea of people and scramble out of the lifejackets.

  I look up Lloyd on my phone. The blue dot flashes. I take Lene’s hand. ‘This way.’ I pull her. She lets go. ‘I can take myself,’ she says and we run through people with no hair and full body tattoos and dancers and people kissing and cans of lager and yoga headstands. In and out of smells and bodies and down through the rocks, over the grass and straight into Lloyd. He runs at us and grabs Lene by both arms. ‘Thank goodness you’re here.’ He shakes her. ‘You need to tell her. She won’t believe me. Tell your mother not to sign.’

  ‘Ow. Get off.’ Lene pulls away.

  I take Lloyd’s arm. He swings round. Confused.

  I look right into his face. This person I’ve known all my life.

  ’Cept maybe I haven’t. Maybe I thought I did. Maybe it’s all just been a lie.

  Say it, I think.

  Just say it.

  ‘Lloyd,’ I say. ‘Are you my dad?’

  He looks at me. His face falls.

  ‘No, Elvis,’ he says and the world slows right down. ‘I am your uncle.’

  Go

  Uncle?

  Uncle means brother. Brother of father. Who is Lloyd’s brother?

  Floyd.

  It’s Floyd.

  Floyd?

  Floyd is my dad?

  ‘NO!’ I yell. ‘No!’

  I pull my energy into my bones and run. I run past skin and rocks and grass and fires and smoke. I run through screams and laughter and faces and darkness. I don’t ever want to stop.

  He didn’t want me to meet my mother ’cos she’d tell me.

  He doesn’t want me to meet her ’cos he doesn’t want me to know.

  I jump over stretched-out legs and stomachs and down to the jetty.

  I feel the compass in my pocket.

  My grandad’s grandad’s blood.

  It’s in me through Dad.

  I’m more him than anyone.

  I’m more Lucas than Partington.

  I bang into a body on the jetty. Head down. I look up. ‘Dad?’

  Kirsten is tying a boat to the dock.

  ‘Elvis?’ Dad puts a hand to my chest like a barrier.

  I dodge it. ‘Leave me alone.’