‘The kite! Its background blends into the clouds! Looks like it’s just the dragon flying up there! What a beaut you picked! I’ve worked out how to do a double loop!’ Dad had that smile you never see in photos. ‘She rules the skies!’ He edged a bit closer so he didn’t have to shout so much. ‘When I was your age, my dad’d take me out on Morecambe Bay of an afternoon – Grange-over-Sands – and we’d fly kites there. Made ’em ourselves in those days…Bamboo, wallpaper, string and milk-bottle tops for the tail…’
‘Will you show me’ (Hangman blocked ‘some time’) ‘one day?’
‘Course I will. Hey! Know how to send a kite-telegram?’
‘No.’
‘Righto, hold her for a moment…’ Dad passed me the spool and got a Biro from his anorak. Then he got the square of gold paper from his cigarettes. He didn’t have anything to rest on so I knelt by him like a squire being knighted so he could rest on my back. ‘What message shall we send up?’
‘“Mum and Julia, Wish You Were Here”.’
‘You’re the boss.’ Dad pressed hard so I felt the Biro trace each letter through my clothes and on to my back. ‘Up you get.’ Then Dad twizzled the gold paper round the kite string like a sandwich-bag fastener. ‘Wobble the line. That’s it. Up and down.’
The telegram started sliding up the kite-string, against gravity. Pretty soon it was out of sight. But you knew the message’d get there.
‘Lytoceras fimbriatum.’
I blinked at Dad, not knowing what on earth he’d said. We stepped apart to let the wheezy fossil-shop owner lug a signboard outside.
‘Lytoceras fimbriatum.’ Dad nodded at the spiral fossil in my hand. ‘Its Latin name. Ammonite family. You can tell by these close tight ribs it’s got, with these extra-fat ones every so often…’
‘You’re right!’ I checked the tiny writing on the shelf. ‘Ly-to-ce-ras—’
‘Fimbriatum. Fancy me being right.’
‘Since when did you know about fossils and Latin names?’
‘My dad was a bit of a rock-hound. He used to let me catalogue his specimens. But only if I learnt them properly. I’ve forgotten most of them now, of course, but my dad’s Lytoceras was enormous. It’s stuck in my memory.’
‘What’s a rock-hound?’
‘Amateur geologist. Most holidays, he’d find an excuse to go off fossil-hunting with a little hammer he kept. I think I’ve still got it somewhere. Some of the fossils he got in Cyprus and India are in Lancaster Museum, last time I looked.’
‘I never knew.’ The fossil fitted into my cupped hands. ‘Is it rare?’
‘Not especially. That one’s a nice one, though.’
‘How old is it?’
‘Hundred and fifty million years? A whippersnapper among ammonites, really. What say we buy it for you?’
‘Really?’
‘Don’t you like it?’
‘I love it.’
‘Your first fossil, then. An educational souvenir.’
Do spirals end? Or just get so tiny your eyes can’t follow any more?
Seagulls strutted in the dustbins outside Cap’n Scallywag’s. I was walking along still staring into my ammonite when an elbow swung out of nowhere and knocked my head backwards on its hinge.
‘Jason!’ snapped Dad. ‘Look where you’re going!’
My nose gonged with pain. I wanted to sneeze but couldn’t.
The jogger rubbed his arm. ‘No permanent damage, Mike. The Red Cross chopper can stay on its helipad.’
‘Craig! Good God!’
‘Out for my morning fix, Mike. This human bumper car’s your handiwork, I take it?’
‘Right first time, Craig. That’s Jason, my youngest.’
The only Craig Dad knows is Craig Salt. This tanned man matched what I’d heard. ‘If I’d been a truck, young fella-me-lad,’ he told me, ‘you’d be a pancake.’
‘Trucks aren’t allowed down here.’ My crushed nose made my voice honk. ‘It’s just for pedestrians.’
‘Jason,’ the Dad out here and the Dad in the fossil shop just weren’t the same person, ‘apologize to Mr Salt! If you’d tripped him you could’ve caused a serious injury.’
Kick the wazzock’s shins, said Unborn Twin.
‘I’m really sorry, Mr Salt.’ Wazzock.
‘I’ll forgive you, Jason, thousands wouldn’t. What’s this? Bit of a fossil-collector, are we? May I?’ Craig Salt just took my ammonite. ‘Nice little trilobite, that. Bit of worm damage on this side. But not too bad.’
‘It’s not a trilobite. It’s a Ly-to—’ (Hangman blocked ‘Lytoceras’ in mid-word.) ‘It’s a type of ammonite, isn’t it, Dad?’
Dad wasn’t meeting my eyes. ‘If Mr Salt’s sure, Jason—’
‘Mr Salt,’ Craig Salt plopped my ammonite back, ‘is sure.’
Dad just had this weedy smile.
‘If anyone’s sold you this fossil as anything but a trilobite, sue ’em. Your dad and I know a good lawyer, eh, Mike? Well. Must clock up