tightening of the rope and a sound like a gulp it went under. Bilal pulled it up fast. He set the two bottles and the saucepan on the ground and filled them with great care. I squatted near to watch as not a drop was lost. He offered up his canvas flask for us to drink from. Long, hard swallows of the clear water. It gurgled inside my stomach, pushing it out like a football. Bilal refilled the flask. He tipped the remaining water back into the well.
The camp was deserted. We shouted for Mum, scanning the beach, shading our eyes against the sun which had sunk towards the lake, turning it to gold and spreading shadows from the foot of each tree. I heard laughter and a shout on the breeze. There she was, her arms waving at us from the water.
‘She’s swimming!’ I shouted to Bea.
‘Hideous kinky!’ she shouted back.
Bilal, Bea and I stood at the edge of the lake, ankle-deep in water, and watched Mum floating on her back.
‘Come in,’ she said, as if it were her own watery kingdom.
Bilal flung off his clothes and waded out to her. Just before he reached my mother’s floating body, he took a dive and swam right under her. She screamed and tipped over. Bilal struck out into the middle of the lake.
‘Take everything off,’ Mum scolded, as I stepped gingerly into the shallows, one hand clutching at the weak elastic of my knickers. I sat down quickly, the water up to my waist. Mum laughed and flitted about like a mermaid.
I lay in the silky sand letting the waves wash me back and forth. The lake was as warm as a puddle. With one hand I held on to my waterlogged pants and with the other I clutched at any shell or rock large enough to hold me to land each time the waves dragged back into the lake.
‘Shall I teach you to swim?’ Bea asked.
‘No thanks.’ I was clinging to a piece of seaweed.
‘Doggie paddle.’ She splashed up and down in front of me, kicking her legs. ‘Watch. Just hold your breath and close your eyes. One two three. Go.’
A few seconds later I opened my eyes. It seemed I had only moved a matter of inches. The water swirled around me thick with sand and tiny shells.
‘My pants!’ I leapt after them, plunging up to my neck as I grabbed at a dark blue shadow.
‘Mum, I’ve lost my…’ But she had swum out to Bilal and now they were two black specks against the sinking sun.
I fought back to the shallows, the sand slipping from under my feet.
‘Mum…’ I shouted over the water. I knew she wouldn’t hear me. Tears as warm as the lake trickled down my face.
Bea held up her identical pair of navy pants. I looked at her. She was going to give them to me. Pretend she’d found them. That they were mine. When really they were hers.
But she didn’t. She screwed them up into a ball and threw them as far out as she could. We watched them float away on a current.
‘Knock, knock,’ she said.
‘Who’s there?’
‘Nicholas.’
‘Nicholas who?’
‘Nicholas girls shouldn’t climb trees.’
We screamed with laughter. We lay on our stomachs in the waves and discussed whether we’d prefer to be a water baby or a chimney sweep. And who we’d least like to meet under the sea. Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby. Or Mrs Bedonebyasyoudid. I thought I’d prefer to be Tom the chimney sweep once he’d become a water baby. We lay in the lake covered up to the chin. The water was warmer now than the air.
Mum and Bilal rose silently up out of the lake, making us jump.
‘Did you swim right the way across?’ I asked.
‘No, just along the shore a little. Have you seen the sunset?’
I turned around. The sun was a smouldering crescent, lying on the edge of the world. Fingers of light streamed away from it up through a wafer-thin purple cloud and into the dome of the sky. We sat shivering and watched the sun sink, giving up the sky to a moon that had hovered high since late afternoon, waiting for its chance of glory.
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘Have you been here before?’ I asked Bilal as we sat cross-legged around last night’s burnt-out fire, sucking the juice from oranges.
He pointed to the lake. ‘You see that?’
I jumped up. A red tractor was gliding noiselessly over the water. It had four enormous wheels that turned mysteriously without sinking. There was