Break The Child: chapter Thirty-Two: ...2 Trouble

‘No way. You are not getting me in one of those things.’ I was laughing but a bit scared at the same time. ‘Do you even know how to work one?’

            ‘Yes, of course I do. Well, what I mean is, it looks easy enough on the telly. That Oxford and Cambridge lot seem to manage okay.’

            I groaned. I wasn’t sure about this at all. Danny had already jumped into the boat and was holding his hand out to me. You’d think the man would have come over to help us in. I glanced back at him, but he was deep in conversation with his friend and didn’t even look at us. ‘What about the life jackets? The man said—’

            ‘Oh, nobody wears them. He just has to give you the warning, like. It’s health and safety, innit, he has to say it, but no one takes any notice.’

            ‘Danny I want to wear a life jacket, what if we capsize?’

            ‘We aren’t going to capsize, are we?’  But he handed me the jacket and I put it on over my new clothes.

‘You look a real hunny in that. And there was me hoping that you’d be doing a bit of topless sunbathing on the deck.’

            ‘By the deck, do you mean the floor in-between those two benches that’s three inches deep in dirty water.’ All the while we were talking I was still standing on the jetty fastening my jacket and Danny was still standing in the boat wobbling about.

            ‘Come on, our time’s running out, we’ve only got an hour and I’ve got a surprise for you.’

            I was scared. I had to step from the jetty into the boat. Danny had untied it from its mooring and was holding onto the jetty with one hand and holding the other one to me. I just knew that when I had one foot in the boat and one on the jetty, the boat would move, and I’d end up doing the splits into the water. I didn’t trust Danny because he was wobbling about all over the place. And apart from all that I had my new boots on, and although they didn’t have massive heels they were very slippy. I sensed disaster looming. Danny saw the expression on my face.

            ‘Babe, don’t be scared. Give me your hand and trust me. I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise.’

            I reached for him and put on foot into the rickety old rowing boat. This wasn’t my idea of fun at all and I just imagined going into the freezing cold, dirty, river and all my new clothes and my hair and make-up and everything being ruined.  The boat wobbled. It tipped towards me and I got my other foot off the jetty and into the boat quick. I wasn’t being brave, I just knew that with one leg in and one leg out I was more at risk than being proper in the flipping thing.

            But then I was proper in the flipping thing and Danny had hold of me round my waist.  The boat was wobbling like crazy and I just knew that we were both going in the water. I was screaming my head off and I saw the men at the desk laughing at us. Danny didn’t have his lifejacket on and the man in charge of the boats didn’t say anything. Danny was right; he didn’t care if we fell into the water and drowned.

            ‘Katie sit down, you’re making the boat wobble.’

            ‘I can’t, the seat’s all wet.’

            ‘Look, you’re going to have us in the water. Will you sit down before you get us both killed?’ I thought this was a tad melodramatic. After all we were only at the edges of the river, not in the high seas of the mid-Atlantic. He pushed me backwards onto the seat as he shouted at me. I was still screaming when my bum plopped down in the puddle on the seat. I decided that getting in and out of boats was not a ladylike thing to do.

            Danny struggled to get the oars in the holders at either side of the boat. Then with him facing into the river he made his first stroke. The oars skimmed the top of the water sending up a great spray that covered me from head to toe. One of the oars was ripped out of Danny’s hand and he fell backwards off his seat and into the small space at the back of the boat. The boat lurched and rocked wildly, and I grabbed out at both sides to try and steady it. Danny grinned at me as he climbed back onto his seat. I was going to be mad at him for getting me all wet, but when I saw his face I started laughing and we were both giggling like mad as we doggy paddled with our hands to get the missing oar.

            ‘It isn’t as easy as it looks,’ he said.

            ‘What about that Oxford lot. They seem to manage all right?’

            He stuck his tongue out at me and splashed me with even more water. When he’d got the oar back, he tried again. He got the hang of it, sort of. We went round in circles a lot at first and Danny got mad because he said he wanted to get to the little island in the middle of the river. He’d get closer and then he’d hit the wave of somebody else’s boat and ours would start going round in circles again. It was really funny. I could see that it was hurting him, and he had to keep stopping a lot to rest and rub his back and shoulders.

 ‘I thought this was going to be easy,’ he huffed.

            We got to the island; we didn’t so much as dock beside it as crash-land into it. I didn’t want to get out of the boat because that would mean having to get into it again. Danny said that if I didn’t get out, he was going to turn the boat over and tip me out. I got out and chased him up the small banking.  We walked through the trees into the clearing in the centre of the island.

            When we saw it, I felt so sorry for Danny. He was dead upset, and I was mad, too. He’d set up the most amazing surprise for me. He’d laid out a tablecloth and did me a massive picnic. How romantic is that? I couldn’t believe it. But somebody, kids probably had got there before us. Danny said that he’d paid the man extra to set up the picnic and tell people that the island was closed this afternoon. Maybe he had, maybe he hadn’t. Perhaps somebody had rowed around to the blind side of the island and had come onto it that way. It was only a bit of grass and a tiny wood about the size of a Co-op in the middle of the river.

            I could see how pretty it had been and I told him not to be upset. It was a lovely thought and I told him that it was one of the nicest things that anybody had ever done for me.

            ‘One of?’ he asked coming out of his mood a bit.

            ‘Oh yes, only one of them. It’s not the most romantic thing of all. You see. I had this boyfriend once who risked getting his head caved in by a gang of bullies when he jumped in to protect me.’

Danny led me over to the cloth and we sat down on it where somebody else had already sat. There were crumbs everywhere. The two plastic glasses lay on their sides in the grass. At least there was still half a bottle of pop left, they hadn’t drunk it all. Danny took the top of the bottle and held it out to me to drink first.  I tried not to think that somebody might have spat in it. I took a sip and the bubbles went up my nose. After me, Danny gulped it down as though he hadn’t had a drink for a week. ‘Thirsty work that rowing lark.’

The two sandwiches had been eaten. The thieves hadn’t even disposed of the rubbish. The processed Asda packaging from the sandwiches was thrown onto the ground to be pecked over by the river birds. It was the same story with the two empty crisp packets and the container that had once contained two-strawberry tarts. Danny was really upset but I wasn’t. It didn’t matter to me that some thieving scum had taken our food. Well, it did a bit, but I wasn’t going to let anything spoil our day. Danny’s only a kid like me, and he’d arranged all of this stuff for me to make it special. It was amazing.

            He picked up the little posy of flowers.

 ‘These were supposed to be laid beside your plate.’

I took them off him and kissed him. As we kissed he pushed me backwards until I was lying down. The then he kissed me really hard and his tongue went in my mouth and then, after a few minutes he rolled on top of me. He moved my shirt to the side and started kissing my neck and all the time he was making these grunting noises.

            It was going too far, and it was all happening too fast. I wanted him to stop. He was really heavy, and I couldn’t breathe. He was squashing me. Almost as soon as he’d climbed on top of me I pushed him off.

‘Danny stop.’

            He stopped straight away and as I rolled him off me he kind of rolled himself off, too. He came into a sitting position with his elbows on his knees and he put his head down.

 ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ He said, and between each sorry he gasped out a load of breath as he struggled to calm down. ‘I don’t even know what I was doing. I just felt all excited and wanted to, you know.’

            ‘It’s okay,’ I said, scared by the feelings because they’re two big for me. I put my arm around him and pulled him towards me. I lay back down bringing him down with me. And then we were kissing again, and I was stroking his face. He stopped and leaned on one arm, looking down at me.

‘I don’t want to push you, Kate, you know that don’t you? I don’t ever want to do anything that you don’t want to.’

            ‘I’m just not ready that’s all.’

            ‘That’s okay, neither am I? I wasn’t going to go any further. I mean, I didn’t want to go all the way.’

He stopped talking and I believed him.

‘We’d better be getting back, or matey will think we’ve robbed his boat,’ he said.’ It’d serve him right after letting that happen to our picnic. I wouldn’t be surprised if it as him who ate the food. I’m starving after all that rowing.’

            ‘Come back to mine and I’ll ask if you can stay for dinner. I don’t know what Dad’s making, but if I can eat it, you should be okay.’

And then I had to get back into that horrible boat again. At least this time I got into it on land. Danny pushed it into the river with me inside and it took him awhile because he’s not very strong. He’s a bit of a dweeb really. He pushed me out into the river and then he had to walk out to his waist in all of his clothes. When he grabbed the side of the boat to drag himself in, I thought we were going in the water for sure. I was glad to get out of it at the other side. Danny told the man about the stolen food and the man just shrugged. I pulled Danny away because whatever had happened, it was still the best day ever.

            I told him that we’d better get back to mine before my dad worried, but he was dripping wet and said that he’d have to go to his house first to get changed. I said that I’d go home and meet him back at mine later. He didn’t want to be apart from me for a single second and persuaded me to go with him. I was a worried about upsetting my folks, but my dad would understand, wouldn’t he.

            I was scared about meeting Danny’s family, but he told me that they were all out. I thought he was just going to go in and get changed and then we’d get the bus back to mine. He insisted on making me a coffee. I don’t even drink coffee, and then he wanted me to listen to this new single that he’d downloaded. We were ready to go but Danny said that he had to make a quick phone call. He went into the kitchen and I wondered who he was calling. I couldn’t hear much, just something about being somewhere in half an hour.

            When he came back I told him that I really had to go home and couldn’t go anywhere else with him. He looked disappointed but shrugged and said okay. I was firm with him. I shouldn’t have come out without telling my Dad in the first place. He walked so slowly to the bus stop that we missed the six thirty into town. I was annoyed. I love being with him, but I didn’t want to get into trouble at home. They liked Danny and I didn’t want him getting the blame for anything and them stopping me from seeing him. That would be awful. 

            When we got to my gate he pulled me to him and kissed me. All thoughts of home left me and it was just me and him, kissing and feeling good with each other.

‘I love you, Katie.’

            It was only a whisper. I didn’t even know if I’d heard him right.

            ‘What?’

            ‘You heard me,’ he said, blushing. He dragged me up the path and we went in.

            I opened the living room door and noticed that the curtains were drawn, that was funny. It was all in darkness. I reached for the light, and suddenly there were people everywhere. Party poppers were going off all over the room; streamers were landing on my head.

            ‘Surprise,’ everybody shouted. The room was decorated with banners and balloons. All my friends were around me, all wishing me Happy Birthday, and my boyfriend, who loves me, by the way, was holding my hand.

            Dad came up and shook Danny’s hand.

‘Good work, Danster. You’ve got the job.’

            Danny let out his breath in a whoosh.

‘You have no idea how hard it was keeping her out until seven.’