– I got a kid who’s seven and won’t put up with visitors without presents.’ He started the engine.
As he began to back away Frank called, ‘What time should I come round?’
‘Come round early – we open presents after breakfast.’
When the van kicked up dust and noise, and Bob’s arm lazed out of the window, his usual long still wave, Frank shouted after him, ‘Hey! Hey! What day is it?’ but Bob didn’t hear.
Down at Crazy Jack’s Toy Basement he was faced with a wall of stuffed animals, a wall of dolls and a wall of things in khaki, an army made of plastic. Inspecting the firing mechanism on a civil-war cannon, he put his hand up to his face and said loudly, ‘Buggeration.’ When he took his hand away a small girl was watching, and he smiled and looked around hoping her mother hadn’t heard. The kid picked up a stuffed dragon and backed away from him like she was dealing with a hostage situation. He smiled wider to show that he was friendly, and the girl turned on her heel and ran away down the next aisle.
He’d forgotten to ask if the Haydons’ kid was a boy or girl. What kind of an arsehole was he anyway? Choosing was hard enough – and there didn’t seem to be much in the way of a neutral toy. He stepped back from the dolls with bendable legs and breathed through his fingers.
A shop assistant with pink lip gloss to match her pink pinafore came over. ‘Can I help?’
‘I have to buy something for a seven-year-old.’
‘Boy or girl?’
‘Not sure yet.’
She looked at him strangely, but smiled. ‘Well, why don’t you pick a boy’s toy and a girl’s toy, so when you make up your mind which one the kid is you can give it the appropriate gift.’
He liked her use of the word appropriate and saw that her hair was thick and a strand curled at her throat. ‘That’s a good idea – you think you could help me pick out something for the girl – I like this cannon if it’s a boy.’
She eyed the cannon in his hand. ‘That’s kind of crappy, don’t you think?’
He looked down at the toy. ‘I suppose it is.’
‘How about this?’ She took down some sort of disc that shot out of a bow-type attachment. ‘It whistles as it flies.’
‘Does it?’
‘Sure.’
‘Well, I’d better have it then.’
The badge on the girl’s rounded front read ‘My Name Is Leonie’, with a happy face at the end of it. My Name Is Leonie saw him looking at her badge and puffed out her chest. Softening her voice and picking up a pornographic-looking Barbie doll she said, ‘And this is the kind of thing that little girls like.’ She handed it to Frank with a glossy smile and walked saucily back down the aisle to the till.
He parked by the bay with the idea that he might read the paper in some cool spot, perhaps with the rocks as shade. There was no breath off the water as he ankled about in the shallows, absently scanning the paper. No chance of rain for Christmas Day.
LOCAL SWIMMER STILL MISSING
Come home for Christmas, pleads missing girl’s father. Local
girl and Home Counties swimmer Joyce Mackelly has been
missing since Tuesday, 19 November. Joyce, fifteen, left her
weekend job at the Blue Wren coffee shop in Mclean at 5.30
and was last seen hitch-hiking between Camel Bay and
Rayners Island.
Poor bastard.
He turned the page and as he did a leaf slipped out and fell into the water. A grained photograph turned black in a wave and he scooped it up and put the pulp back between the pages of the newspaper, which he balled up. He hadn’t really wanted to know anyway.
There had been nothing that he could even think of buying Bob and Vicky in town. Drink was the get-out clause; he could take them champagne or a crate of beer. It was stale, going to spend Christmas with this family who had taken him on like an old friend even with him acting mad as a coot. He should probably take some as well as a present. As he tumbled these thoughts over, he waded further out, so that the water seeped into his shorts and even though it was not particularly cool, it was better than nothing, and he sat down in the sea, the newspaper a wet rock in his fist. The waves were small and water swilled round his neck. Something