Samir said I shouldn’t tell anyone and I don’t want to make things worse, do I?
I race upstairs and start grabbing some of Grandpa’s old clothes. I pull out his dear, holey, blue sailing sweater. It still has a faint smell of his pipe, which I absolutely loved but Mum couldn’t stand. She wouldn’t ever let him smoke in the cottage, even when it snowed. I can’t help wondering what he would say about hiding our man from the police. There’s no time to think about that now.
I pull out two thick sweaters, warm trousers, a woolly hat, two shirts and some thick socks. I also find an old pair of boots Grandpa used to wear on the boat.
I push everything into a sleeping bag I keep for Kim when she sleeps over and then haul it downstairs.
In the kitchen I boil the kettle twice, first filling a hot water bottle and then a flask with coffee. Somehow we have to get our man warm and we can’t exactly build a fire in the hut.
Trudy’s beginning to whimper as I stuff bread, cheese, a packet of sliced ham, apples and a six-pack of chocolate bars into my school backpack. Then Mum calls out and I freeze.
“Alexandra?” Her voice is all wobbly and weak.
I dump the food by the front door, glaring at Trudy, who just ignores me and gives a little “whuff.” I know she’s building up to one of her excited barking fits as she senses we’re going out. “Coming, Mum,” I say.
If Trudy makes too much noise Mum will come stomping out on her crutches and see all the stuff.
I go into the living room. “I think Trudy needs another walk,” I say.
“It’s getting late,” grumbles Mum, and then as Trudy lets out one short sharp bark, she relents. “All right, but make sure you’re home by five, before it starts to get dark.”
I look at the digital display on the video: 16:04. Talk about pushing it. “No worries,” I call out cheerfully, realizing I sound like the surfers on her Aussie soaps.
Before she can say anything else I’m out in the corridor heaving on my backpack. It’s going to be really awkward running like this, with the bulging sleeping bag in my arms. A bit like the waiter who runs the London Marathon with a drinks tray. I can’t put Trudy on the leash but I’m pretty sure she’ll just follow me.
As I sprint down the road and past the Lifeboat Station onto the main stretch of beach, the wind is reaching storm level and black clouds are piling up over the Solent. The sea is rolling up and down enough to make anyone feel sick. There’s a really bad night brewing and I have to fight my way against the rising gale up to the hole in the fence. My arms are aching fit to drop off and the pack’s dragging painfully on my neck. I just about get to the hut before I totally collapse and bang on the wall.
Samir’s frightened voice calls out, “Who’s that?”
11. Part of the Story
I’m probably just in time. Our man’s shivering uncontrollably. We pull all the clothes onto him and zip him into the sleeping bag with the hot-water bottle tucked in under the sweaters. He looks like one of those ancient Egyptian mummies by the time we’re finished and all you can see is his face with its straggly beard and all those bruises and his lips blue with cold.
“I should have brought two hot-water bottles,” I mutter, unscrewing the flask.
Samir puts his arm around the man’s head and sits him up and tries to tip coffee into his mouth. Eventually he starts to sip and then takes great gulps. He finishes the entire flask in minutes and then he seems to come alive a bit more and opens his good eye.
I can hardly bear to look at the other one, it’s so bruised and swollen and it’s stayed tight shut. What if it’s gone blind or the eyeball’s dropped out? I don’t know anything about first aid and I’m pretty sure Samir doesn’t either.
“Don’t you think we should at least try and get him to a doctor?” I say, thinking about Mum lying on the floor.
“No!” Samir snaps back. “We don’t know who we can trust.” He’s taken back his denim jacket from our man and put it on. Samir looks very cold too.
I think of the Nigerian doctor who seemed nice enough. But what if the first thing he did was call the police? Samir would never forgive me and that gives me such a strange empty feeling that I keep quiet.
Our man has pulled his hand out from the sleeping bag and started on the bread and cheese, stuffing great wads into his mouth.
“He’s starving,” I say.
Samir nods. “The smugglers didn’t give him anything.”
“Drug smugglers?”
Samir shakes his head. “People smugglers. They charged him $50,000 to bring him to England. Scumbags.” And he glares around the hut as if he’s looking for someone to thump.
“That’s ridiculous, it can’t cost that much,” I say, and Samir gives me a pitiful look. So I decide to change the subject. “Did he have a job in . . . er, wherever he comes from?” I say.
“Basra,” says Samir in a closed sort of voice. “It’s in southern Iraq.”
I nod casually but it isn’t much help. I have trouble working out the bit of France I’m going to on French exchange next term. Geography’s not my strongest subject. “What did he do there? Builder, plumber?” I’ve read in the papers that’s what most foreigners do.
Samir gives a snort. “He was at university. He was studying engineering.”
“Oh,” I say. Engineering? Well, how was I to know? He doesn’t exactly look like a techie type.
With all that hair tangled around his head and his scruffy beard, he looks more like one of the beggars from around the mall in Portsmouth. But I look again at his hands as he eats and they don’t look like a builder’s hands, they are too small, with thin, short fingers.
But then I see that Samir has closed down again, head leaning against the wall of the hut, his eyes staring blankly into space. Would he rather I left now? Maybe this man wants me to go as well. I caught his one good eye staring at me for a second as he munched on the bread and it wasn’t a very friendly look. I don’t blame him really. He’s in pain, hidden away in a foreign country by a couple of kids. How does he know he can trust me? At least Samir speaks his language.
They probably think I just don’t understand the situation, and let’s face it, I don’t really. I’m just the one who got caught up in this big, fat secret.
But it’s a bit Lara Croft, all this. The kind of thing you see on telly and imagine happening to you, like an airplane crash on a desert island. I’d be the one who could run the fastest and find water first or keep the signal fire alight on the mountain and get us rescued. It’s exciting and dangerous and our man needs our help and Samir needs me. So I’m not backing out now, am I?
It’s getting darker and darker but I’ve forgotten my watch. “I have to go soon,” I say, standing up. “What about your mum and dad? You haven’t been home all day. Won’t they notice?”
Samir doesn’t speak and all I can hear is the howling of the wind in the pine trees around the hut.
Then he says, “My parents are dead.”
It’s so awful.
I just stand there. I don’t know which way to look. When I look at Samir again his face is pinched and closed and I’m terrified he’s going to start crying.
What do you say to someone with dead parents? Grandpa dying was bad enough, and Dad has managed to disappear totally off the face of the earth. But it’s not the same, is it?
I look over at our man and his face is creased with pain as he wriggles about in his sleeping bag. What are his parents thinking right now?
I can’t help wondering how Samir’s mum and dad died, as if it was important and it completely isn’t. I can’t ask that in a million years. There’s so much hidden in this little hut, and whatever I’ve dived into here, it’s only going to get more complicated.
This man, Mohammed, is here without permission, he’s an illegal immigrant, and Samir speaks the same language. Does that mean he’s here without permission too? Does school know? Oh God, should I tell someone?
Samir startles me by speaking
again. “I was sent out of Baghdad when I was nine.”
“What do you mean, sent?” I ask.
But Samir doesn’t seem to hear me; he just carries on in a sort of monotone, like a robot. Maybe he’s had to tell the story a million times since he came to England and he’s just totally bored with it.
“My father was a lieutenant in the traffic police. He wasn’t a criminal. But one day Saddam Hussein’s men took him away and put him in prison. We couldn’t even visit him. Then they came for my mother. Naazim was put in the army. He was only fifteen.”
“So what had your parents done wrong?”
“Nothing. They did nothing, Naazim says someone in the police had a grudge against my father and so they betrayed him.”
“That’s horrible,” I say. “Didn’t anyone stand up for him? I mean, it’s so unfair.”
Samir gives me a pitying look and our man shifts in the sleeping bag. Samir leans over and murmurs something to him and the man nods but his head is beginning to droop again. No one stood up for Mohammed either, it seems. Except us.
I sit down again and pull Trudy onto my legs for comfort, running my hands through her fur. What would I do if Trudy wasn’t here anymore? Dad’s gone, Grandpa’s gone, Mum’s useless. My dear little dog sometimes seems to be the only one left in the world I can depend on. How must it feel for Mohammed? He has no one.
Samir starts to speak again in that low monotone and I can barely hear him above the wind. “After they arrested Dad they came for Mum. No one told me anything. Then two days later the soldiers came and dragged Naazim away.
“He screamed at me that our father was dead. But I didn’t believe him. I was so stupid.”
I clutch Trudy more tightly, feeling scared and confused all at the same time. “But I don’t get it, why are you here in England?”
“Uncle Sayeed woke me up in the middle of the night. He said they were coming for me.” Samir looks at me and his eyes are wide with fear again. “They were going to put me in prison too.”
I let out a gasp and clutch Trudy until she yelps.
“I didn’t even have time to pack,” Samir goes on. “Uncle Sayeed drove me to the airport and handed me over to a lady I didn’t know. He gave me a kiss and told me to be very good and then I was taken onto the plane. The strange lady didn’t speak to me at all and I slept most of the way. When we got to Heathrow Airport she disappeared.”
“How old did you say you were?” And I’m wondering if all this was last year.
“Nine.”
“So that was . . .” I make a quick calculation, “2002. Five years ago. You’ve been here five years?” I can’t imagine leaving Hayling Island for six months. How can he stand it?
Samir nodded. “I came to England one year before the war and the end of Saddam Hussein. It came too late for my family.”
“So what happened to you at Heathrow Airport?”
“It was terrible. I was standing there in my socks—I couldn’t find my shoes because we left so quickly—and I felt so silly. I didn’t know who to ask for help. Anyway, I didn’t speak any English.”
“But you speak it so well.” Much better than Naazim, I can’t help thinking.
“I had to, didn’t I? Anyway, some social workers came and they put me into a children’s home. There were kids there from Afghanistan and Somalia, kids who had arrived in England all alone, like me. We couldn’t even speak to each other.”
A children’s home! Pictures of orphanages and Oliver Twist spring into my mind. “It must have been awful.”
Samir nods. “I was so homesick and really scared all the time. The other kids were crying and fighting and the food was horrible. But then they sent me away from London to a foster mother who lived near our school.”
“Was she nice?” I ask hopefully.
“She was okay,” he says. “She wasn’t my mother, though. And she smoked a lot . . .”
“What, in the house?”
“Yeah . . .”
“Gross.”
“I thought my parents would get out of prison really quickly and fly over to England and come and rescue me,” Samir says. “Then we’d go back and live in our house in Baghdad and of course Naazim would be there too. I just had to be patient and study really hard at school because English is useful in Iraq. I didn’t understand anything, I was so stupid.”
“You were only nine,” I say.
Samir’s head drops and he slumps back against the wall. Mohammed is staring at Samir with his good eye and I can’t help thinking how shifty he looks. How do we know what he’s doing here, or if we can trust him? But I feel mean having these thoughts so I don’t say anything out loud.
“Auntie Selma escaped about six months later,” Samir goes on. “She hates it here. She cries all the time for Uncle Sayeed, her husband. They don’t have any children. She finds English difficult so she hasn’t really made any friends.” He looks down at his cigarette and then back up at me. “It took Naazim longer to get here, almost a year.”
“So how do you know your parents are dead?” I ask. “Maybe they’re just in some prison.”
Samir’s chin sinks into his chest. “Uncle Sayeed wrote and said that my parents had died in prison. We’re stuck here forever.”
So it was Samir’s parents who were tortured. Meeting Mohammed must be bringing it all back to him. I don’t know what to say and that terrible chill runs down my spine again.
But it seems to me that we are a little bit the same. Samir has to do everything alone, like me. All he’s got is Naazim, who’s only nineteen, and his Auntie Selma, who hardly speaks any English.
But that’s where it ends. Samir’s been through such a horrible time and all that’s happened to me is that I’ve been left looking after Mum. No one in my family has been arrested or tortured or killed in prison. What would I do? How does Samir even get out of bed in the morning? We sit quietly for ages and I’m thinking how Samir always keeps himself apart from everyone else at school. It’s as though he needs to keep an invisible wall around himself, not let anyone get too close, because his story is so awful. Like an ice man.
I get this strong desire to put my arm around him, but I don’t know if he would like it. So I just reach across Trudy’s back and pat his hand a bit and I can feel him relax so that’s okay.
Then he sort of shakes himself like Trudy does after a nap and says in a lighter voice, “What took you so long? Thought you’d changed your mind.”
So I tell him about Mum and the fall and the doctor and it’s a relief to get off the subject of dead parents.
“Has he been sick again?” I ask.
Samir shakes his head. “He’s looking a bit better.” Mohammed has pulled himself upright again and both his hands are out of the sleeping bag and he doesn’t seem to be shivering anymore. His lips are still very blue but he’s eating more bread and cheese.
I notice the ham lying on the floor and pick it up. I hold it out but he just shakes his head vigorously. I glance at Samir.
He’s got a knowing grin on his face and then he says in a deeply sarcastic voice, “Don’t you listen in Religious Studies?”
“No,” I shrug. “Me and Kim text each other.”
“Doesn’t the teacher notice?”
“We put our phones on silent,” I say.
That does it. Samir starts to laugh. It’s unbelievable. I wouldn’t have thought it possible. Maybe it’s nerves or exhaustion or hypothermia, he’s still wearing his wet jeans, but his laughing gets louder and louder until it almost blots out the storm raging around the hut. Mohammed looks at him all startled and scared and he’s got his bread poised in front of his mouth as though he’s forgotten to take a bite and then he starts to laugh too, a deep, throaty laugh.
That sets me off, even though I haven’t a clue what’s so funny. And Trudy gets overexcited and races up and down, playfully nipping my hand. It’s the best laugh I’ve had since before the broken leg.
It takes ages for us to calm down. One
of us stops and then someone else starts and everyone just cracks up again. But eventually Samir and I throw ourselves down on the floor and Trudy flops between us and Mohammed, still grinning, gobbles down the last bit of bread.
“So what’s the problem with ham?” I ask breathlessly.
“We’re Muslim, we don’t eat pig meat,” says Samir.
“Oh,” I say, feeling really dumb and then I nod toward Mohammed, “not much sign of concussion now.”
Samir stands up. “I have to get home before dark or my brother will ask questions.”
Of course he will, I think.
Samir says something to Mohammed, who nods, his eyes already drooping again, and then he wriggles back down in the sleeping bag.
“Will he be all right?” I ask.
“It’s a million times better than the smugglers’ boat,” says Samir. “Meet me in the morning?”
I hesitate and our eyes meet for a few seconds. Then I say, “Of course,” and we go out into the driving rain and the full force of the gale. A bus is arriving as we get to the road and Samir shouts good-bye and runs off. When I get home the video display says 17:13 and Mum’s dozing in front of the telly. That’s a relief, I think. She can’t give me the third degree about where I’ve been, and I’ve still got time to get ready for the school dance.
I go straight into the kitchen and cook me and Trudy a huge fry-up, and as the storm rages like a battle around the cottage my head’s full of prison cells, escape routes in the night, a fishing boat tossing on the Channel and a huge bag bursting with American dollars.
12. Listening In
I’m at the Rave, which is just another boring school party in the main hall. All I want to do is go home again.
The storm is still raging and everyone arrives screaming with their hair wet and telling insane stories about flooded roads and lightning strikes on trees. The Jayne family come in, arm in arm, wearing the same outfit: denim shorts, black tights, glittery vests and shaggy knee-high boots. Jess Jayne takes one look at me in a T-shirt and jeans and sneers, “Come in fancy dress, did you?”
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