Three Hours(46)

I’m not a complete loser all the time, you know.

Of course you aren’t. I never thought that. And you carried on, didn’t you? You didn’t give up.

Exactly. I’m a trooper. And what about my A levels? My party?

In his bedroom above his desk is a piece of paper pinned to the wall with ‘100%’ written in his beautiful calligraphy and she’d been both heartened at his ambition for his A levels and worried that he’d fall short, because though some kids do get 100 per cent in their A levels they work far harder and are cleverer than Jamie; she’s feared disappointment, sadness. Next to it, an elaborately drawn ‘18’, although his eighteenth birthday is almost a year away and she’s been worried about that too, that his imagination would outstrip whatever party he gave. Or maybe she didn’t want to think about him becoming an adult before she had to. Mike had been irritated with her for not seeing the positive.

As if parties and grades matter now, as if anything matters now apart from him being alive and safe and able to live the rest of his life.

Steve has put down his mobile and is speaking too fast, a shake in his voice, as if his fiancée’s feelings have physically transferred themselves to him.

‘A little boy in her group is missing. He didn’t get on to any of the boats. Chloe thought his form teacher, Mrs Cardswell, had him, but his form teacher thought Chloe was looking after him. It wasn’t her fault, I kept telling her that; a girl had an asthma attack and—’

‘What boy?’

‘Which class?’

‘In Chloe Price’s class?’

‘Is the girl all right? The one that had an asthma attack?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re certain it’s a boy?’

‘Do you know his name?’

‘Basi Bukhari,’ Steve says.

‘Oh, thank God. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’

*

In the shed, eight-year-old Basi Bukhari is standing because it’s less cold than sitting on the floor, which is all damp and icy, but his legs are getting wobbly with being tired and frightened. His hands and ears sting with cold. He tries to pull his sleeves over his hands but they’re too short, so he hunches his shoulders together so the sleeves will reach.

When they all got to the beach it was freezing, the wind picking up the icy cold of the sea and throwing it at their faces and hands and any part of them where their clothes had got untucked.

Rafi was looking at Miss Kowalski’s phone, with other teachers looking at it too, but he was just listening to the sea shouting that it had monsters inside it – Wa-hush, Wa-hush, Wa-hush!

Sometimes it pretends to be blue and friendly but it drowns people.

Rafi put a life jacket on him and they joked about the pi?ata in the shop in Alexandria and he thought it would all be okay because Rafi was with him and it was okay if Rafi was with him.

He told Rafi he needed to put on a life jacket too, but Rafi didn’t say anything and he didn’t want Rafi to say the next thing, because he knew it would be a bad thing. He said he didn’t want to play any more, though he knew, really, that they weren’t playing. And then they argued, Rafi saying he’d be safe and him saying he needed Rafi to come with him, so it wasn’t a real argument, just him trying to stop Rafi leaving him. Rafi has never left him.

‘But they’re shouting at me, the monsters, Wa-hush, Wa-hush, listen! Can you hear? It’s even worse than a hole!’

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

‘No.’

‘She was in the station, remember?’

‘We pretended the station was a palace,’ he said because maybe if he kept Rafi talking he wouldn’t leave.

‘Romanesque,’ Rafi said because he is going to be an architect when he’s older, like Mama, and knows the names of everything. ‘With a piazza and columns and friezes.’

‘And there were benches made of marble.’

‘That’s right.’

‘But we had to go into the bit that had ropes around it. The migrant bit.’

‘And when people went past I told you to watch out for their briefcases,’ Rafi said. ‘Because you were at the edge and they could bash into your head.’

‘I thought you said “brief faces” not “briefcases”!’

‘That was brilliant of you, because that’s what they were like; lots of brief faces. And then the princess stopped.’

‘We don’t know for sure she was a princess.’

‘I think that she was.’

‘Me too,’ Basi said, because she probably really was, and he was only arguing before because he wanted to keep Rafi talking.

‘And she gave us money,’ Rafi said. ‘So we could buy new clothes and train tickets. Do you remember what you got?’

‘Blue trousers and a shirt with cowboys on it from the shop in the station.’

‘Zara Kids,’ Rafi said.

‘And lots of pants and socks.’

‘We had a good wash and we got changed.’

‘And we put our old clothes in the bin,’ Basi said, ‘because they were really smelly and horrible.’

‘We looked so smart and smelt so nice that no one thought we were migrants any more.’