Call of the Undertow by Linda Cracknell Read Free Book Online

boy.
    ‘That’s a very sad story then.’
    The boy turned his head up to her, one eye piercing the gap in his straggling fringe. ‘Why?’
    ‘Well, for his family. His friends. Never to see him again.’
    The boy shrugged. ‘She was very beautiful.’
    She smiled to herself. As if that made his removal from their lives a small thing to accept.
    He went on, pointing ahead towards a house that dominated the long flat sward leading out to Dunnet Head. ‘And I went up there too.’
    ‘You’ve been busy.’ She wondered if this had all been in response to her talk. Flattering as it might be, it seemed rather an extreme response.
    ‘That was how you said they did it?’ he said. ‘Taking sightings from the highest places around.’
    ‘Well, yes.’
    She looked at his map again and pointed. ‘This here, that’s the old RAF airfield?’
    ‘Might not be quite right yet. I need to look from Inkstack. Then I’ll draw it in properly.’
    ‘With a pen?’
    ‘Aye.’
    She grinned at the child. ‘Well done.’
    He looked back at her as if unsurprised at his own abilities.
    ‘And your mum and dad, have they taken you to all these places to get your data?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘So...?’
    No answer came.
    She imagined the distances involved for a child of about nine. It seemed a serious endeavour.
    ‘Do you have a bicycle?’
    ‘Sort of.’
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘Well it’s my dad’s really, but he doesn’t often use it.’
    She could see he wasn’t the sort of child who’d be mucking about jumping puddles on his bike with the other boys, or worrying about where he was going to get designer trainers
from.
    ‘You stay in Flotsam Cottage, don’t you?’ he said suddenly.
    She didn’t reply. He was a child. There should be boundaries. And that word ‘stay’ niggled. She knew by now that its sense in Scotland was ‘live’ but after two
months she wasn’t sure which she was; tourist or resident. Or which she wanted to be.
    ‘It’s here.’ He pointed at the cottage on his map, tucked downhill from Sally’s bungalow, drawn on his map in partial elevation. Just north-east of it was the sprawl of
the derelict farm buildings. He looked up at her, the fringe swept aside to reveal his dark brown eyes. ‘Do you think it’s right?’ the boy asked.
    ‘What?’
    ‘The cottage. Should it be a bit more towards the main road here?’
    ‘Is it for school, this map? For your project?’
    He looked at her as if surprised at the question and then just shrugged. ‘I can still move it.’ He took out a soft rubber to show her.
    ‘I’ll look forward to seeing it when you’re finished.’
    ‘I’ll bring it round.’
    ‘I meant at the school.’ Her voice whipped out quick and hard, a defence; driving him beyond her walls and fences.
    She wished she understood kids better. Some, like her sister’s, seemed easy to be with and knew their place. She never got anything confusing from them. But then, they mostly ignored her,
and she them.
    She tried to make up some softer ground. ‘Your parents must be proud of you. What do they do for jobs?’
    He looked ahead at the sea and the sky before answering. She noticed his profile now, how the forehead almost ran straight into the nose without the normal dip at its bridge, and how the chin
jutted out, following the same, single line. It was an odd face, flat and almost ugly as well as beautiful. There seemed something of the Arctic about him; some resemblance to Sami people.
    ‘Dad’s a truck driver. He’s away sometimes. Mum’s in the reception at the doctor’s.’
    ‘And you’ve brothers and sisters?’
    ‘No,’ he said. ‘I was their only gift.’
    Laughter jerked out of her. ‘Is that what they call you? Sorry.’ It was such an odd way for a child to explain his own existence, and yet there seemed not a touch of irony in it.
    He half shrugged.
    ‘You’ve an unusual name,’ she said.
    ‘How do you know?’ he asked.
    When she failed to answer, he asked: ‘What’s