Lifesaving for Beginners

Make sure it’s all there.’
    That’s when I run. I’m not as good at running as I am at swimming but I still came second in the hundred metres at school last year. Only Carla beat me and her mam did the London marathon two years in a row and Carla says she’s going to do it too, when she’s old.
    Stranger danger. We learned about that in school. You’re supposed to run away. And scream to attract attention.
    I don’t scream. I don’t want to attract attention. I just run. I don’t look back till I’m at the top of the road. I can’t see him. But I see his car moving towards me, making hardly a sound.
    Damo’s house is round the block. I jump over the gate and run to the side entrance. The door is locked but easy enough to climb over. I run down the narrow passage to the tree at the end of the garden, where the tree house is. It’s really just a big slab of wood with sheets on either side, pretending to be walls. I climb past the middle bit, which is usually where I stop. But this time I go all the way to the very top of the tree. Damo probably won’t believe me when I tell him.
    There are no leaves, on account of it being winter, but it’s dark so I don’t think he’ll see me unless he’s got a torch with batteries in it.
    I hear the car coming down the road. Dead slow. When it reaches Damo’s house, it slows down even more. The lights are off but I can see the tip of a cigarette, glowing red in the dark. And I can see the man. He looks like he’s staring right at me.
    I’m thinking about screaming now. Opening my mouth as wide as it will go and screaming my head off. Loud enough to wake Damo’s mam and Imelda. Sully’s at the war and I probably wouldn’t wake Damo. His mam says if a bomb exploded right beside him, he still wouldn’t wake up.
    I open my mouth.
    And then I think about all the trouble I’ll be in if I scream loud enough to wake Damo’s mam and she goes and wakes Faith and Faith finds out about me going to the post office on my own instead of going to the library with Damo. I bet I’d be grounded for about a month. Maybe even longer. And I probably wouldn’t be allowed to go to lifesaving or buy a PlayStation 3, even if I had the money for one.
    My breathing sounds funny. Really loud, for starters. I press my hand across my mouth but the breath comes out through my nose instead, just as loud. The taximan is still there, still sitting in his car with the lights off and the window down. Still smoking, even though I don’t think you’re allowed to smoke in taxicabs.
    Just when I’m so cold that I think I can’t hold onto the branch anymore, the lights of the car turn on and the engine starts and the car disappears up the road. I make myself wait ten minutes after the man drives away. To make sure. Then I climb down to the tree house, and it’s a good job I’m pretty good at tree-climbing now, because, if I wasn’t, I’d definitely fall out on account of my hands and feet being so numb with the cold.
    It’s hard to think about a Plan C. I drink the orange juice in my flask and wish I’d made hot chocolate instead. I look up at Damo’s window and try not to think about him snoring his head off in his warm, cosy bed. I pretend he’s here too and I have a conversation with him. Not out loud or anything stupid like that. Just in my head. Just to pass the time. When I’m finished, I’ll get cracking on a Plan C.

 
    Not much happens.
    I think about ringing Thomas.
    I don’t ring Thomas.
    This might be how smokers feel when they think about cigarettes but don’t light up.
    It gives me a twitchy feeling.
    I smoke a lot.
    Brona rings. I tell her I can’t talk. I’m in the middle of a chapter.
    I don’t write anything.
    I examine my face in the mirror. My almost-forty-year-old face. Every day I look a bit older. The lines lengthen and deepen. If I watch long enough, I can almost see it happen.
    Minnie rings to tell me she has stopped vomiting in the  afternoon, evening and night. She says, ‘It’s just the morning sickness now. Proper morning sickness.’ She sounds delighted.
    I don’t tell her. Even though Minnie is the only one in the world who knows everything, I don’t tell her. About the letters. The three letters.
    I pick up the phone and put it down and pick it up again. Then I put it down.
    I don’t ring. I don’t ring Thomas.
    So when he does find out, it’s quite by accident.
    He comes to Ed’s swimming gala.
    He remembers.
    Of course he