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‘I know how you got that scar,’ the boy said, eyes travelling along the ragged indentation that ran across my cheek.
I wasn’t going to let him see any reaction. He was in his mid-teens, sturdily built, with the tan of someone who’s rarely indoors, glossy black hair, and a seaman’s earring dangling from his left ear, a gold hoop with a cross. He had grey-green eyes, set close together over a beaked nose, and very dark lashes, half-lowered at the moment so that he could watch me slantways from behind them, like a cormorant keeping an eye on a dangling fish.
I was still trying to place him. I was getting to know most of the children in the area, and his face was familiar. Not one of the club’s sailors – – then I remembered this face smiling insolently at me from under a helmet. He’d come to fetch his little brother on a quad. His brother was Alex, a keen sailor who was still working his way through the wind-still in the marina’s rocky entrance behind me. Olaf Johnston’s son – – Norman, that was his name. I remembered Olaf from school, and wasn’t at all surprised that he’d turned into a parent who let his children charge around the roads on the quad; he likely considered that making them wear a helmet was discharging his duty to health and safety.
He wasn’t a parent who’d be much help in the present situation.
It was a bonny, bonny evening. Even though it was almost nine o’clock the sun shone steadily on above the hill to the west and glinted on the water. The tide had turned an hour ago, and was just beginning to sidle down from the warmed concrete of the slip. The silver ghost of a three-quarters moon gleamed above the eastern hills. The force 3 southerly had kept the pink-sailed Picos scudding briskly around their racing triangle, and we’d all been having a really good time until there was a high-whine engine roar from the jetty below the clubhouse, then this boy bounced out on his jet-ski, curving around the dinghies to rock them, and flipping in between them to send water glittering over them. I’d resolved to have a word with him once he came ashore again.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I know this is a public slip, but there’s no need for you to be driving your jet-ski so close to these beginner sailors.’
He ignored that. ‘Your boyfriend shot at you. Then you pushed him overboard and left him to drown.’
