generally flattish with various dips and rises, but there was a steeper slope on the lagoon side, taking them high enough to get something of an aerial perspective. She stopped to take in the view, but Linus sank to his haunches on the warm rock once again and looked back towards Summer Isle, like an old lost dog trying to get home.
It broke her heart to see it.
‘Wow!’ she breathed, trying to engage some interest. At this height, maybe seventy feet up, they were above the canopy of most of the trees. The roof of the orange house could be clearly seen from up here, and the clearing for the garden was like a dimple. The shape of the island was just about discernible as well – it was a ragged, almost rectangular sheet of land, with numerous nips and pleats, tucks and inlets, like a rag that had been burned. She calculated the perimeter had to be about a mile and a half, maybe two miles long. Positively gargantuan! She pivoted on the spot, taking it all in, her –
‘. . . Linus, come look at this.’
Her tone was enough to stir Linus from his resentful reverie. ‘What is it?’
‘Come and see.’
‘Why can’t you just tell me?’
‘Because I think you’ll like it.’
He got up, giving an exasperated sigh that would have made any self-respecting teenager proud. ‘What is it?’ he asked, standing by her. His expression changed as he caught sight of what she was staring at. Perhaps a hundred feet inland, a crescent of blue could be glimpsed through a crater. ‘That’s the sea.’
‘Right?’ She grinned.
‘Do you think that’s . . .?’ He looked up at her, mouth agape. ‘The hidden beach?’
She winked at him. In all their miserable resentment, they had both completely forgotten about it. ‘There’s only one way to find out. Come on, let’s find the way in.’
Together they scrambled down the incline.
‘Right, you go first,’ she said, pushing him ahead of her.
‘Why me?’
‘Because you’re faster, and if this is where Dr No keeps his sub-atomic testing facility, then I’m going to need a head start for getting out of here.’
Linus laughed, shooting her a look that wouldn’t have been quite so wry a year ago. He was growing up.
They climbed, ran and scrambled over the rocks and through the trees, the sea at their backs, until the crater suddenly opened up at their feet. Absolutely huge, perhaps fifty metres across, it was an almost perfect circle blown in the rocks. The force of the bomb had set the beach ten metres below ground, the grooved granite walls scooping away beneath them. Three quarters of the basin floor was covered by sea, with a shallow beach that could only catch the sun through the middle of the day.
‘How do we get down there?’ Linus asked in amazement.
‘Maybe we don’t,’ Bell said, puzzled. ‘Your mamma didn’t say anything about swimming down there. Only that it was there.’
‘But I want to swim down there.’
Bell rolled her eyes. Of course he did. Now he wanted to swim. ‘Well, it’s too far to jump down, and we’re definitely not going down if we don’t know if we can get back up again,’ she said, seeing the sharp concave angle at which the rocks were cut away.
‘There has to be a way down,’ Linus murmured, beginning to walk around the perimeter. ‘Maybe there’s a rope.’
‘Oh yeah, because I could definitely get myself back up again on that!’ Bell guffawed.
‘Look!’ He pointed to something halfway round. In one spot, perhaps a seam of thicker rock, the wall hadn’t been blown back quite as far as elsewhere and the cliff kicked into the basin, like a stray pleat. A narrow channel ran down the centre of it, rainwater running through like a rill. It was about a foot’s width – depending on the foot.
‘Linus, those are not steps,’ she protested as he tore ahead and skittered down it like a mountain goat. ‘Linus!’ she called, seeing how he held his arms out wide, stepping confidently, jumping onto the sand a moment later.
‘Bugger,’ she muttered, knowing she’d have to follow suit. Carefully she scrambled down, with significantly less stealth and flair, cursing under her breath. And then, as her feet touched the sand, not under her breath, ‘Holy shit!’
If looking down upon it had been impressive, standing down and looking back up again was awe-inspiring. The cliff walls swooped around them like a vaulted hall, the walls scooped back as if by a