Laura Marlin Mysteries 2: Kidnap in the Caribbean
Page 16
He grinned. ‘Or she could be mine.’
Laura turned off the television. She had a smile on her face, but she was deeply moved. She’d never have believed it a week ago, but she couldn’t wait to have dinner with the Gannets that evening. Jimmy, Rita and Bob were coming over to the villa and they were going to have a vegetarian barbecue on the beach. They all agreed that they’d seen quite enough fish for one week.
Laura was particularly looking forward to seeing Jimmy. She’d found a Matt Walker novel in a local bookshop and she wanted to give it to him to inspire him to carry on dreaming and believing that he could do anything. Not, she thought, that he needed a novel. He’d managed very well on his own.
On the phone, however, as in the press conference, he’d insisted on giving his friends all the credit. ‘I learned a lot from watching you and Tariq on the ship,’ he told her. ‘Firstly, you stand up for yourselves, even against adults, if you think you’re right. When the ship’s crew and half the passengers were refusing to believe that your uncle had been kidnapped and calling you stowaways, you stood your ground. It was like watching the lions versus the gladiators. I would have run away crying. But you were firm and you held onto the truth and didn’t allow yourselves to be bullied.
‘There were a couple of other things too. I saw how calm you both were when you saved me at the climbing wall. Other kids – kids like me – would have been boasting and full of themselves, but you and Tariq just carried on without a fuss as if you rescued people every day.
‘What helped me most, though, was when you told me about how criminals worry so much about the details that they forget about the obvious stuff. That’s what I was thinking about when I saw the laundry chute. They had all this fancy alarm equipment and steel doors and combination locks, but they’d forgotten about the ordinary everyday thing staring them in the face.
‘So, thank you,’ Jimmy had added.
‘For what?’
‘For teaching me, for saving me, for being a friend to me and for making this the most exciting holiday of my life.’
‘You’re very welcome. Thank you, Jimmy.’
‘For what?’
‘For all the same things,’ Laura told him. ‘We wouldn’t have survived the most exciting holiday of our lives if it hadn’t been for you. Hey, Jim …’
‘Yeah?’
‘Remember what I told you. If you can face down the Straight A gang, the bullies at your school will be nothing.’
‘That’s right,’ said Jimmy, and she could hear the smile in his voice. ‘They’ll be nothing.’
Out on the verandah, Laura allowed herself to revel once more in the dazzling array of blues. This time in a week, they’d be in mid-air, on their way back to St Ives. If the weather forecast was to be believed, it would be raining when they got there but Laura didn’t mind in the least.
Paradise is all very well, but there’s no place like home.
Endangered Marine Species – The Facts
Jaws has given sharks a fearsome reputation as man-eaters, yet in the past five years no more than four people have died each year from shark attacks. Sharks cause fewer deaths than lightning, dogs or falling coconuts. Compare that to our treatment of sharks. We slaughter 70–100 million a year, mostly for shark’s fin soup, one of the world’s most expensive delicacies. Boat crews often slice off the fins of living sharks and toss them overboard to die a slow, painful death. Up to 10 million kilos of shark fins are exported every year to Hong Kong, a trade hub, which then sends them onto China, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Taiwan. In the UK, shark meat is sometimes sold as ‘rock salmon’ in fish and chip ships.
In July 2010, Hawaii made it illegal to possess, sell or distribute shark fins, but it might be too little, too late. Scientists fear that threatened shark species like the Porbeagle, Dogfish, Oceanic Whitetip and Scalloped Hammerhead will be one step closer to extinction by the time CITES (Commission for the International Trade in Endangered Species) meets again in 2013.
WHAT YOU CAN DO: Don’t ever order shark’s fin soup at a Chinese restaurant or ‘rock salmon’ in a fish and chip shop. Ask your family and friends to consider joining you in boycotting shark products.
Atlantic bluefin tuna is among the most critically endangered species on earth. Between 1970 and 2007 the Atlantic bluefin tuna population declined by an estimated 82.4 per cent in the Western Atlantic alone. The tuna is a slow-growing fish that can take up to twelve years to reach maturity and only spawns every two or three years, making them particularly vulnerable to extinction. Yet when did you last see a sandwich shop that didn’t sell tuna sandwiches? The black market in tuna alone is believed to be worth over $7 billion a year. Over 80 per cent of captured bluefin tuna ends up in Japan, where it is mostly eaten raw as sushi. In 2010 a single tuna weighing 512lb was sold for $178,000 at Tokyo’s Tsukii fish market.
WHAT YOU CAN DO: Stop eating tuna and consider asking your parents and friends to do the same. Ask your school or local sandwich shop to stop serving tuna fish.
A few years ago a BBC survey showed that swimming with dolphins is the activity most people want to do before they die. Across the world, dolphins are suffering horribly to make this dream come true. In places like Japan and the Solomon Islands, wild dolphins are captured and sent off to marine parks across the world. Many of these dolphins die on the way, and the ones who don’t are often kept in swimming pools where chlorinated water burns their eyes and skin. Think about how red your eyes are after you’ve been in the swimming pool. Now imagine chlorine burning your eyes and blistering your skin twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week for ten or twenty years. That’s what some dolphins experience. In the ocean, dolphins swim up to 50km a day and live in big, social groups that spend hours every day hunting. In captivity, they are confined, bored, abused, made to perform ridiculous tricks, and fed dead fish, all so someone can say they swam with a dolphin.
WHAT YOU CAN DO: Refuse to visit any facility that keeps captive dolphins. If your dream is to swim with dolphins, wait until you have the chance of swimming with them in the wild, in situations where the welfare of the dolphins is paramount. Better still, content yourself with observing them from boats on tours that respect the dolphins’ space and freedom.
Six of the seven species of marine turtle are endangered, and yet illegal trade in meat, leather and eggs from these animals continues. In 2009, enforcement officers seized 849 sea turtles from a Vietnamese farmer who was planning to sell them for their meat and shells.
WHAT YOU CAN DO: If you’re travelling and are offered souvenir turtle’s eggs, leather or shells, refuse to buy them and contact the authorities. Sponsor a turtle family through the Born Free Foundation: www.bornfree.org
The illegal trade in seahorses for use in traditional Chinese medicine is on the increase. In July 2010, a single seizure in Beijing turned up 100 kilos of freeze-dried seahorses. The legal trade is also a matter of grave concern. An estimated eighty nations trade in 24 million seahorses annually.
WHAT YOU CAN DO: Never buy any seahorse product, legal or illegal.
Leafy and Weedy seadragons are very rare and highly prized by collectors. If you own an aquarium, boycott any shop that sells them and refuse to buy them.
For more information or advice on how to sponsor marine species or raise money for them, contact the Born Free Foundation or join their Born Free Kids club: www.bornfree.org
Heartfelt thanks to my agent Catherine Clarke, my editor, Fiona Kennedy, and all the other lovely people at Orion, especially Lisa Milton, Alexandra Nicholas, Nina Douglas, Kate Christer and Jane Hughes. Thanks also to David Dean for the incredible cover, to Anne Tudor of the Born Free Foundation for suggesting the location, and to Carlisle Bay resort in Antigua.
Look out for more mysteries with
Laura Marlin in August 2012.
Copyright
AN ORION CHILDREN’S EBOOK
First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Orion Children’s Books.
&nb
sp; This eBook first published in 2011 by Orion Children’s Books.
Text copyright © Lauren St John 2011
Illustrations copyright © David Dean 2011
The right of Lauren St John and David Dean to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work has been asserted.
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978 1 4440 0281 2
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