The Coldest Blood

The Dolphin Holiday Camp

Friday, 30 August 1974

In the saltmarsh, under a covered boat, Philip lay still.

The dilemma was always the same one – an excruciating tension between the fear that he would never be found, and the fear that he would. Switching on his torch, he played the beam on his wristwatch: a Timex Christmas present with half-hearted luminosity. 8.42pm.

Twenty-five minutes had passed since he’d left the others by the sluice gate. He’d heard some footsteps almost immediately, timidly padding round the old boathouse. Dex. Almost certainly Dex. Then nothing, except the distant barrel-organ leitmotif of the fairground.

He lay, curled in a ball now, hoping above all that it wouldn’t be Smith. Then he’d have to lie still with Smith, waiting for the others. That was the game: each one had to squeeze in until the last one was left alone, searching.

Let it not be Smith, who smelt of the cloying tang of the chemicals they made him rub in his hair. Let it not be Smith, who would clamp a hand over Philip’s mouth if the others got near.

Or the sister? Philip’s heart leapt. The last time, she’d held his hand to stop him crying out. She smelt of the sand, and of the natural oil in her coal-black hair.

The tide, resting at the full, began to ebb. He could hear the black water slap the rotting planks of the old boathouse, and somewhere the sea began to trickle back through an open sluice. He thought again of the single lit porthole in the marsh, and wondered what lay within.

And then, as sharp as a seagull’s violent screech, a single cry of pain. Philip’s hair bristled and his heart creaked in his chest. Then a sob, but not the one he would have expected after the pain – there was relief, satisfaction, even joy. What pain gave joy?

Had something happened in the game? Dex, almost certainly Dex, falling and snapping one of his narrow bony ankles. Or Smith, vaulting a channel, breaking an arm. Would they leave him now, forgetting him, running home?

He lay, praying for it to end, praying for it not to end, and a second before it did he knew it would. A rattle, loose change in a pocket, gave him away. The tarpaulin, ripped back, showed Smith against a sky of stars.

‘Come on,’ he said, shining his torch in Philip’s face. ‘We’ve found something. Something by the river.’

They ran along a bank head high with the bristling moon-splashed reeds. Then the pale eye of the porthole was ahead of them; closer now, and impossibly bright. Against the yellow circle of light he could see Dex and his sister at the glass, peering in. Smith roughly put an elbow round his neck and a hand over his mouth, dragging him down to his knees: ‘Quiet. Did you hear it? He’s in the boat, we’ve seen him.’

He was afraid then, realizing again how lonely he was with these children, how much he didn’t know about what they shared.

They started to crawl forward to join the other children and Philip was close enough to smell Dex’s fear when they heard the second cry of pain, like the first, laced with that after-shock of satisfaction.

There was a single beat of silence before Dex screamed, his small head jerking wildly, while the sister pulled him down, away from the light.

Philip knew then that he wouldn’t get to see, that like so much else of his childhood, and his life, the night would be defined by what others had experienced, and by what he had missed.

But they’d been seen, and they were running now, all of them, back along the dyke. He found Dex’s hand in his and they ran together, back to the sluice, the jagged gasping of their collective breath louder than the waves beyond the dunes. But here Philip, haunted by what he’d missed, turned and saw the distant silhouette of a man on the boat against the sky, one arm cradled by the other.

The sister pulled him back, down the path to the leap, then over and on between the chalets. When they reached the lamp by Philip’s they stood for a second, listening, and he saw that the sister had gone.

From the fairground came the ritual screams from the falling big dipper.

Philip waited to catch Dex’s eyes. ‘What?’ he said, knowing he would answer. But Smith dragged the younger boy away. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow.’