Heart to Heart. Amber Aitken

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СКАЧАТЬ with one eye. Doggy drool dripped from his lips, but he didn’t budge.

      “You’ve got it now, so you may as well eat it!” ordered Coral crossly. She had told him so many times before not to take food from people’s beach picnics. Still, one piece of salami probably wouldn’t do any harm.

      Nicks giggled. “Maybe we should find Romeo a doggy girlfriend. It might just keep him out of trouble.”

      Coral made a pooh-pooh sort of face. She puckered up her lips and rubbed Romeo tenderly on his chin, which was now mucky with mayonnaise.

      The girls were so busy concentrating on Romeo that they’d failed to notice that the red hut next door was slowly coming to life behind their backs.

      “Ew, look at your fingers,” said Nicks.

      “What’s wrong with them?” Coral loved her pup, drool, mayonnaise and all.

      “They could do with a good wash,” laughed Nicks.

      “Oh, I’ll just wipe them on—”

      The sound of rattling keys ended Coral’s sentence. Both girls spun in the direction of the sound.

      There stood a very tall man - so tall his head loomed over the door frame of the red hut. And he was as thin as he was tall - so thin that the Adam’s apple in his neck stood out like a second (and only slightly smaller) head. He looked like a long thin snake that had just eaten something quite large. The lump pulsed up and down like it was still alive.

      Both girls sucked on the air so hard it sounded like they’d been winded.

      “What a scary kind of guy…” wheezed Coral breathlessly.

      Scary-kind-of-guy heard their gasps and twisted his heads left. His eyes were small and round and so dark that they seemed to reach out and hook on to the girls. They couldn’t have looked away if they’d tried. The black pinpoints of his eyes drilled into theirs like a locked-on laser beam. And still the lump in his neck pulsed. Up-down. Up-down. Up-down.

      Forever came and went and still they all stared at each other. And then, suddenly, Scary Guy moved the long thin sticks of his fingers. The keys on the round brass ring in his left hand banged together, the sound echoing like the clang of a giant brass bell. It even seemed to surprise Scary Guy, who all of sudden dropped the brown leather bag he’d been carrying. It landed with a monumental thud. The impact of the fall sprang the lock and the two halves of the bag suddenly split apart and fell wide open. They all stared at the bag as its contents spilled out across the decking. There was a hammer, a long coil of rope and a roll of thick silver duct tape.

      Suddenly, Scary Guy stooped low, and in no more than two swift movements he had scooped the lot back up into the bag and snapped it shut. He was just as quick to unlock the hut’s door and disappear inside, slamming the door shut behind him.

      And then the world seemed especially quiet. A wind came up and blew the girls’ hair, but still they didn’t move. They were all big eyes and thumping chests. It was Romeo’s howl that finally broke the spell. It was almost as though he sensed that something was up.

      Coral was the first to breathe again. “Wow wee…” she gasped. “What do you make of that?”

      Nicks was the first to actually move again. She slithered on to a deckchair and tapped her knees thoughtfully. “He was a strange one,” she said. “Did you see the stuff in his bag?”

      Coral nodded solemnly. “You do know what the most common use for duct tape is, don’t you?”

      Nicks shrugged lightly. If Coral was going into crazy mode there was no point in encouraging her.

      “Kidnapping… murder… that sort of thing!” Coral cried out, grabbing the air with her hands and giving it a good shake.

      Now it was Nicks’s turns to snort, only she made more of a delicate pssht sort of sound. “Oh, please, where do you get that from?”

      “I watch television! Where there’s dodgy business - there’s duct tape. No criminal can be without it.”

      “Keep your voice down.” Nicks glanced left, then right, before whispering, “So you’re suggesting that our neighbour is a criminal?”

      Coral paused and took a deep breath. “Not just a criminal. A—” She stopped herself. Actually, she wasn’t exactly sure what she was suggesting. But she was convinced that Scary Guy was up to no good. Why else did you carry duct tape, a hammer and rope around with you?

      Coral did an about-turn and tiptoed inside Coral Hut. She really needed to lie down on the lovely bright white daybed for a bit. She wanted to rest and think the whole dramatic incident through.

      Coral sighed as she absorbed it all. She felt better already. Almost. Sort of. With just a bit more rest…

      

       queen of hearts

      Nicks and her mum were still jumping the early-morning waves the next day as Coral made her way over to the beach hut, feeling queasy from all the saltwater she’d swallowed. She climbed up the front steps and settled down on her beach towel, pressing her tummy to the deck, and resting her chin on her hands at the edge. The view was good and the warm morning sun had turned the deck toasty. She could even see the top of Romeo’s snoozing head poking out of the cool hole he’d dug in the warming sand. And then, very slowly, she started dozing off. When suddenly—

      “SAY IT ISN’T SO!”

      The voice was so loud. Coral hoisted one eye up.

      “I don’t even know what that colour is!”

      “It’s called khaki.”

      “They should call it KAK-i instead.”

      “Oh dear.”

      “And what’s that hanging over the roof?”

      “It’s camouflage netting - my uncle’s ex-army,” This particular voice sounded weary.

      Coral raised the other eyelid ever so slowly. The image of four older girls came into focus. They were standing in front of Headquarters with lipglossed lips and manicured fingers pinching their trim hips. They all wore variations of the same sort of thing: bikinis, knotted sarongs, oversized sunglasses, wide-brimmed sunhats, and enormous beach bags dangling from the crooks of their bent arms. They looked like a fashion shoot. Coral guessed they must be about eighteen years old. She kept her eyes half-mast and watched them carefully.

      “We could spruce the place up a bit?” suggested the weary voice with forced cheeriness. “I’m sure my aunt and uncle won’t mind if we add our own pretty touches.”

      So that was Saffron - Birdie and the Captain’s niece. Coral zoned in on her - with her sequined clothes, shimmering glass-bead accessories and glittery lipgloss, she was obviously a sparkly sort of girl.

      “We’d СКАЧАТЬ