Secret Friends (4 page)

“Sorry, but I can’t,” said Antonia. “I promised Dad I’d keep away.”

“It’ll only take a minute. Please, Antonia.” Sophie twisted a brown strand of hair around her finger. “I’ve got to take these paintbrushes back. I found out that it’s stealing to keep things that have fallen from a boat. Mum and Dad would be really upset if they knew what I did. I hardly slept last night thinking about it.”

“I told you it was stealing yesterday!”

“I know.” Sophie was embarrassed. “I thought you were wrong.”

Antonia didn’t want to make Sophie go to the beach alone, but she wished she didn’t
have to break her promise to Dad.

“Oh, all right,” she said. “But we need to be quick. If we’re late for school we’ll have to sign in at the office and then I’ll be in trouble.”

Antonia’s mum worked in the office at Sandy Bay Primary School. Most of the time it was nice having Mum around, but it also had its disadvantages.

School bags bumping on their backs, the girls jogged towards the beach. As they grew nearer, the pavement became more crowded and Antonia kept hold of Sophie’s hand so they didn’t get separated by the wave of people heading towards the sand. At the promenade they stopped for Sophie to get the paintbrushes out of her school bag.

“Wait here,” said Sophie, “I won’t be long.”

“No.” Antonia made a lightning decision. “I’m coming with you. There are too many people around. If we separate we might lose each other.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Antonia couldn’t risk losing Sophie. That would surely make them late for school. Antonia hated disobeying Dad, but it wasn’t like she was doing anything wrong. She was helping her friend to put something right and Sophie would have done the same for her if the situation had been reversed. Trying not to think about her promise, Antonia forced her way on to the sand.

Sophie glanced around anxiously. “Shall I
hand them to a policeman or just drop them somewhere?”

“I can’t see any police,” said Antonia. “It’s too crowded.”

“Here then,” said Sophie, dropping the paintbrushes as if they had suddenly become too hot to hold.

“They might get trodden on there.” Antonia stooped and picked them up. “Let’s leave them on top of that litter bin where they can be seen.”

She squeezed her way over to the bin, picking her way round a lawn mower and a set of golf clubs, and left the paintbrushes on its lid.

“Right, let’s
go
.”

“Hang on.” Sophie screwed her eyes up. “I
think there’s some of our class over there by the lifeguard’s chair.”

“All the more reason to get going.” Antonia spun Sophie round and pushed her back towards the promenade. “We’re not supposed to be down here, remember?”

“Ooh! I forgot!” exclaimed Sophie, turning red.

They squeezed their way across the crowded beach, not daring to look back until they were safely on the promenade. By then the Sandy Bay school children had been swallowed up in the crowd. Antonia was relieved. That had been close, but she didn’t think they’d been spotted.

“Come on,” she said, breaking into a jog. “I need to find Cai before lessons start. I want to
know how the birds at Sea Watch are doing.”

Sophie grinned.

“You and your animals! Come on then, we’ll run.”

T
here was no sign of Cai in the school playground. Disappointed, Antonia wandered into the classroom and sat down. She kept her eyes on the door as the classroom slowly began to fill up. Lauren and Becky came in together, talking loudly. Lauren seemed excited. Her eyes swept the room and seeing
Antonia, a cruel smile played on her lips. Antonia’s heart dipped as Lauren ambled towards her. What did the big girl want?

“Your dad’s a bit choosy, isn’t he? He wouldn’t buy stuff from my brother yesterday.”

Antonia shrugged and picking up a pencil, she began to doodle in her work book.

“Does your dad know you took stuff from the beach too?”

Antonia’s heart thudded loudly. So she had been seen this morning. Carefully she turned her doodling into a tiny dolphin leaping a wave.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said quietly.

“Paintbrushes,” Lauren grinned nastily. “We saw you this morning, didn’t we, Becks?”

Becky nodded vigorously.

“Then you’d have seen I was putting the paintbrushes somewhere safe,” said Antonia coldly. “I left them on a bin where they wouldn’t get broken.”

Lauren narrowed her eyes. “Maybe we didn’t see that bit. Did you see her leave them on the bin, Becky?”

“No, I don’t remember seeing that,” Becky sniggered.

Antonia shrugged as if she wasn’t interested, but her heart was banging even faster. “That’s your problem.”

“No, it’s not!” Lauren squatted down so her face was millimetres from Antonia’s. “It’s yours. I might just mention it to your mum. See what she says.”

“Mum doesn’t listen to tell-tales,” said Antonia calmly while inside she was bubbling with panic. Antonia knew Mum would believe her version of events, but she might ground her for breaking her promise to stay off the beach. That would mean no Sea Watch and worse still there would be no going out to answer Spirit’s call.

“‘Mum doesn’t listen to tell-tales’,” mimicked Lauren. “Well, you won’t mind me telling her then, will you?” She barged Antonia’s chair, then walked away laughing.

“Is everything OK?” Cai came into the classroom and hurried over, his dark eyes full of concern. “Is Lauren being a pain?”

Antonia was angry and scared, but she wasn’t going to let on. If she acted like she
didn’t care maybe Lauren would give up and annoy someone else instead.

“It’s nothing. How’s things at Sea Watch?”

Cai studied her for a moment with his face creased into a frown. Then he said, “We only had three new birds in this morning. According to the coastguard the oil’s breaking up much faster than everyone thought it would.”

“Good,” said Antonia. “That means…” She was about to say that Spirit and his pod could come back soon, but stopped herself in time.

“What?” prompted Cai.

“It means less damage to the sea,” Antonia said lamely. “How are the birds that came in yesterday?”

Cai paused. “Eight of them died last night, including the ones we bathed.”

Antonia felt as if a hole had opened up in her stomach. First Lauren and now this! She swallowed, forcing herself not to get upset.

“What happened? Did we do something wrong?”

Cai shook his head. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault. Aunty Claudia said it’s quite common for birds to die after they’ve been cleaned up. Some have been too badly poisoned to recover and some just die from shock.”

Miss Brown came in carrying the register so Cai went to his place. Antonia stared out of the window wishing school was over and she could
go
to Sea Watch. Lessons seemed a waste of time when she could be helping there instead. She was also longing to tell Claudia that she’d been to see Spirit. Antonia was
almost certain she hadn’t been imagining things yesterday when she’d heard Claudia’s voice in her head, telling her to work things out for herself.

“Antonia Lee, are you here or am I looking at a cardboard cut-out?” Miss Brown’s voice broke into Antonia’s thoughts, bringing her out of her daydream.

“Here, Miss,” she answered meekly.

“Nice to have you with us.” Miss Brown’s pen flicked down the register as she continued calling out names. When she’d finished she held the register up in front of her.

“Who’ll take this to the office for me?”

“Me.” Lauren shot Antonia a sly grin. “I’ll go and give it to Mrs Lee.”

Antonia pretended to flick through her work
book while inside her heart was thumping again. If Miss Brown picked Lauren, then she was done for.

“Lauren, don’t call out. Luke, your hand’s up. You can do it.”

Antonia’s breath hissed out with relief. Then realising it was going to be a nightmare if she had to worry about Lauren telling on her all day, she had a brainwave. She would
go
and confess to Mum herself; far better to be grounded for owning up than because she’d been snitched on by Lauren. Antonia could barely concentrate during maths and at playtime she was first out of the classroom. She ran all the way to the office.

“Walk,” bellowed Mr Cordier, the head teacher, coming out of his room. “Oh, it’s you
Antonia. Funny, I thought a herd of buffalo was travelling past.”

Giggling, Antonia slowed to a fast walk. She was nervous about telling Mum she’d broken her promise, but at the same time she was keen to get it over with. There was a queue at the office. Antonia waited impatiently, hopping from foot to foot and when her turn came she was so anxious her tongue tripped over her words. To her enormous relief Mum wasn’t cross.

“Because you were helping a friend
and
you owned up. But please don’t disobey me or Dad again,” she added.

Antonia could hardly look at Mum. If Spirit called then she would be forced to disobey both her parents.

“Cheer up,” said Mum, mistaking her crestfallen look. “It’s not like you’ll be missing anything. The police are temporarily closing all the beaches in the area to stop the looting. I heard it on the news before Jessica and I left this morning. Extra police are being drafted in to keep people away. Anyone found on a local beach will be prosecuted.”

“Prosecuted?” Antonia’s insides turned to ice.

“Taken to court,” said Mum. “Run along now. I’m too busy to stand here chatting to you all day.”

Pulling herself together Antonia went outside. She spent the last few minutes of playtime making it up to Sophie, who was not pleased that Antonia had disappeared without
saying where she was going and even less pleased that she’d told her mum about the paintbrushes.

“That means I’ll have to tell my mum now, just in case your mum mentions it,” Sophie complained.

“Your mum will be fine,” said Antonia automatically. “You’ll feel much better once you’ve told the truth.”

“Then why don’t you feel better?” asked Sophie grumpily. “You’re as white as a ghost.”

“I’ve got a headache,” said Antonia, rubbing her forehead. What if Spirit called her now? How on earth would she answer his call with police everywhere and all the beaches closed? Crossing her fingers tightly Antonia hoped that Spirit wouldn’t need her help.

C
ai and Antonia were on their way to Sea Watch. Cai was telling Antonia about his surfing lesson the weekend before.

“Then I fell off the surfboard, washed up on the beach and landed next to a lady who screamed and dropped her ice cream on her husband,” Cai chuckled.

“That is so funny,” Antonia giggled. “Are you going to try surfing again? It’s brilliant fun once you get the hang of it.”

“Course I’m going to try again,” said Cai. “I don’t give up that easily. You’d better watch out. It won’t be long before I’m as good as you.”

“Then we can surf together,” said Antonia enthusiastically. Surfing with Cai would be brilliant. He was great fun to be with. “Only we can’t surf now the beaches are closed.”

“That won’t be for long,” said Cai. “There can’t be much more stuff to come ashore. Who’s that on Aunty Claudia’s drive? He doesn’t look very happy.”

A middle-aged man with balding hair and a paunch was climbing into a green car. His
face was like a thundercloud. He slammed the door and snapped on his seat belt. As Antonia stared at the man a feeling of unease came over her. It made her skin prickle with goose bumps. The car engine roared to life and the man took off, his wheels spinning gravel into the flowerbed. Cai broke into a run and Antonia followed him into the back garden. Side by side they raced down the sloping lawn towards the large wooden building at the bottom. Suddenly, the door opened and Claudia came out, her lips pressed together in a firm line. Antonia had never seen her look so angry before and she felt a little scared.

“What’s the matter?” panted Cai. “Who was that man? What did he want?”

Claudia’s nostrils flared as she struggled to control her anger.

“He came from the city,” she said at last. “He’s bought a motorboat and he wanted to launch it from my beach.”

“I thought all the beaches were closed,” said Antonia.

“Not the beach at the end of my garden. The police can’t close that as it belongs to me,” said Claudia. “As you know it’s only a small area. That man wanted to use my beach as a base to scavenge from. He offered me a percentage of anything he found and got very nasty when I turned his offer down.”

“Are you all right?” Antonia touched Claudia on the arm. “Shall I make you a cup of tea?” There was a kettle in the Sea Watch building.
Antonia’s mum always made a cup of tea when there was a crisis. Antonia wasn’t sure why, but Mum seemed to think it helped.

Claudia smiled. “No, thank you. One of you could
go
and close the gates for me, though. I leave them open for my adult volunteers who drive here, but I think I’d better keep them shut to deter any more strangers from coming in.”

“Let’s chain them together with a huge padlock. That’ll keep people out,” said Cai.

“I don’t think we need to
go
that far.” Claudia smiled at him. “I don’t want to keep everyone away. Come and find me on the beach when you’re done. You can help me to take some sea samples. I’ve been checking for oil, but we seem to be all right so far. The oil hasn’t reached our beach.”

Claudia strode towards the beach and Cai raced back up the garden to close the gates. Antonia stayed rooted to the spot, relief flooding through her. She could hardly believe her good luck. She hadn’t realised Claudia owned her patch of beach. So she could swim out to Spirit if he called her. Then a new thought struck her and Antonia’s mouth widened into a huge smile. Why wait for Spirit to call? She would go and visit the dolphins again, as she’d done yesterday. Only this time, purely for fun. She knew Bubbles would be pleased to see her and maybe she could persuade Dream to play with them too. Antonia really wanted to make friends with Bubbles’s big sister.

“What are you grinning at? You look like
you’ve had some really good news.” Cai was back from shutting the gates.