clear my throat and lean into the microphone. The sound of me clearing my throat fills Ueno. When Yuki Chiyo hears her name she hugs herself.
I’m broiling with embarrassment. Yuki Chiyo studies me.
‘So, Yuki. How old are you?’
‘Ten. But Mummy tells me not to speak to strangers.’
‘You already spoke to me.’
‘Only because I needed you to call Mummy.’
‘You ungrateful tadpole.’
I hear Aoyama marching this way before I see him. His shoes, his keys. ‘You! Miyake!’
Obviously I am in deep shit. ‘Good afternoon—’
‘Do not “Good afternoon” me! Since when have you had the authority to make a general override announcement?’
My throat is dry. ‘I didn’t realize that—’
‘Suppose a train were hurtling into Ueno with a snapped brake cable!’ His eyes froth. ‘Suppose I were making an evacuation announcement!’ Veins bulge. ‘Suppose we receive a bomb warning!’ Is he going to fire me? ‘And you, you, blanket out my warning with a request for a lost girl’s mother to proceed to the lost property office on the second floor!’ He pauses to restock air. ‘You, you, pollute the order with your teenage chaos!’
‘Tra-la-la!’ A leopardskinned woman pads up to the counter.
‘Mummy!’ Yuki Chiyo waves.
‘Dearest, you know it upsets Mummy when you go off like this! Have you been making trouble for this handsome young stripling?’ She nudges Aoyama aside and deposits her designer bags on the counter. A perky vixen smile. ‘I am so frightfully sorry, young man. What can I say? Yuki plays this little game whenever we go shopping, don’t you, dearest? My husband says it’s just a stage she’s going through. Do I have to sign anywhere?’
‘No, madam.’
Aoyama smoulders.
‘Let me give you a little something for your trouble.’
‘Really, madam, no need.’
‘You are a darling.’ She turns to Aoyama. ‘Jolly good! A porter!’
I kill my snicker a fraction too late. Aoyama radiates nuclear fury. ‘No, madam, I am the assistant station-master.’
‘Oh. Well, you look like a porter in that get-up. Come on, Yuki.’
Yuki turns to me as her mother leads her away. ‘Sorry I got you bollocked.’
Aoyama is too furious to bollock me further. ‘You, Miyake, you, Iam not going to forget this! I am going to file a report about this outrage to the disciplinary committee this very afternoon!’ Off he storms. I wonder if I still have a job. Suga steps out from the back office. ‘Quite a talent you have there for annoying people, Miyake.’
‘You were there all along?’
‘You seemed in control of the situation.’
I want to kill Suga so I say nothing.
I am on the ferry! So many times Anju and I have watched it; now I am actually on it! The deck slopes side to side, and the wind is strong enough to lean back into. Yakushima, the enormous country I live in, is slowly but surely growing smaller. Mr Ikeda is scanning the shoreline with his army binoculars. Seabirds follow the boat, just hanging there. The second-graders are arguing about what will happen when the ferry sinks and we have to fight for the lifeboats. Others are watching the TV, or being chucked out of places you’re not allowed. One kid is vomming in the toilets. The engine booms. I smell engine fumes. I watch the hull slice through the spray-chopped waves. If I hadn’t already decided on being a soccer star I would become a sailor. I look for the shrine of the thunder god, but it is already hidden in the morning haze. I wish Anju were here. I wonder what she’ll do today. I try to remember the last day we weren’t together. I go back as far as I can, but no such day ever was. Yakushima is now the size of a barn. I watch new islands rise ahead and fall behind. I can fit Yakushima inside the ‘O’ of my thumb and first finger. A tooth is wobbling loose. Mr Ikeda is on the deck too. ‘Sakurajima,’ he shouts at me above the wind and the engine, pointing ahead. I watch the volcano grow and take up a third of the sky. The torn crater belches graceful solid clouds of smoke over another third. ‘You can taste the ash,’ shouts Mr Ikeda, ‘on your tongue! And over there, that’s Kagoshima!’ Already? The voyage is supposed to take three hours. I consult my Zax Omega watch and find that nearly three hours have passed. Here comes Kagoshima. Huge! You could fit the whole of Anbo, our village, between two jetties in the harbour. Enormous buildings, vast cranes, huge freighters