Three Hours(21)

The cliffs made a roof over them. The teachers emptied all the bin bags they’d been carrying and they had life jackets in them.

Basi was still looking down at their snow footprints because he didn’t want to look at the sea. But the sea was shouting at him:

Wa-Hush, Wa-Hush, Wa-Hush.

Wahush meant ‘monsters’ in Arabic; the sea was telling you that it had monsters inside it.

Miss Kowalski said, ‘We’ve got a big treat today. We are all going to go on a real lifeboat! And maybe a police boat too! And then the seekers will never find us!’

And everyone apart from Basi was laughing, because all the grown-ups were playing, the lifeboat people too, even though it was a little bit like cheating.

Rafi was holding a life jacket and he started putting it on Basi. It felt all rubbery and damp and he hated the smell and the cold heaviness.

‘Remember the pi?ata in Alexandria?’ Rafi said, because he could tell Basi didn’t like the life jacket and he wanted to make him smile. And it was really funny. There’d been a shop selling little life jackets for children and babies. An old man had said something to Rafi, but really quietly so Basi couldn’t hear. He thought what he’d said had made Rafi angry because Rafi got a stick from the back of the shop and hit a little life jacket and hit it and hit it. The shopkeeper got angry too and Basi started to cry, then Rafi said, ‘It’s a pi?ata, Little Monkey!’

‘Are there sweets inside?’

‘No, it’s a terrible pi?ata.’

And they’d laughed because it was funny Rafi thought a life jacket could be a pi?ata and because they’d been naughty and were afraid of the shopkeeper.

‘We ran so fast, didn’t we?’ Basi said.

‘Super-fast.’

When they’d got their breaths back they found another shop. Before they went in he told Rafi the old man had lied, life jackets are never pi?atas, they never have sweets inside. It was the first time he could tell Rafi something important he didn’t already know. The shop had been selling balloons too, maybe that’s what had got Rafi muddled. Rafi looked at the life jackets in the next shop really carefully, but he didn’t hit any of them, and then he bought Basi a Yamaha one, which was red and grey and used up almost all their euros but it was the best kind you could get.

The school life jacket was yellow. Rafi pulled it up over his head, snagging it on his ears, and it hurt.

Rafi made sure Basi’s life jacket fitted properly and wouldn’t come off over his head. They were safe now under the cliffs, he was pretty certain of that. Nobody had followed them along the path, nobody had seen them. He’d done it. And boats would soon be coming.

He tried his phone again but there still wasn’t a signal. Miss Kowalski had shown Rafi her text messages when they’d got to the beach, like he was a member of staff too: code red; gunman in the woods; police car shot at.

‘Rafi? You need to put on your life jacket.’ Basi was tugging at him.

‘I’m sorry, Little Monkey, I can’t come with you.’

‘Then I won’t go.’

‘You’ll have Miss Price looking after you and Mrs Cardswell and you’ll be with all your friends.’

‘I don’t want to play any more.’

But he knew Basi had already guessed this wasn’t a game.

‘It won’t be anything like the Journey, I promise.’

‘No. You have to come too.’

‘It’ll be a very short boat trip with nice English policemen who’ll look after you; special boat policemen. Please will you be brave and go on the boat?’

‘They’re shouting at me, the monsters, wa-hush, wa-hush, listen! Can you hear?! It’s worse than a hole!’

He was breathing too fast, eyes dilated, terrified.

Rafi listened to the waves crashing on to the beach and understood Basi’s terror and knew that this was the worst thing he’d ever done to him.

‘Remember the princess in Milan, Basi? Do you remember her face?’

Trying not to rush Basi, he talked about the beautiful woman in Milan station, who’d been so kind to them. When Basi’s breathing slowed, he took his hand and led him over to Miss Price, who was doing up life jackets on a group of children.

‘Rafi, I don’t know how to thank you. If it wasn’t for you—’

‘Look after him, for me.’

‘But—’

‘I’ll be fine.’

She didn’t argue; evacuating them bought him a bit of trust, he thought, deserved or not. He passed Basi’s hand over to hers, but Basi tried to hold on to him.

‘It’s a Have-To-No-Arguments,’ he said to Basi. ‘Okay?’ He waited and then Basi nodded and stopped trying to hold on.

He kissed him on the top of his head, his silky hair soft against his lips, saw the pink raised scar along his cheek, his long curling eyelashes, tears at the ends like beads. He told him to be brave, that he loved him, and then he ran back towards the cliff path.

Being apart from Basi felt like a physical severing but they’d all look after him and he was in a proper life jacket, not one made out of foam that soaked up water and drowned children faster. An old man had quietly warned him. Not thinking about the effect on Basi, he’d picked up a stick and bashed a tiny life jacket so that the foam spilled out and everyone could see it was an evil trick, and not to buy one, and the shopkeeper had yelled at him but he hadn’t cared and then he’d seen Basi crying as he hit the life jacket. It’s a pi?ata, Little Monkey! The balloons probably gave him the idea, like it was a party shop, but they were sold for keeping phones dry at sea.