The Paradise Trap (14 page)

Big Coco was certainly shaken to the core. Gasping and reeling, she looked like someone about to have a heart attack. Little Coco, in contrast, was blithe and happy. She was also as cute as a button in her purple-hippo swimsuit, with her painted toenails and missing teeth.

‘Hey!’ she chirruped. ‘Why are you here?’

She was talking to Edison – probably because they were both around the same age. It was Marcus, however, who replied.

‘We’re here to play,’ he said quickly. ‘Is there anyone here we can play with?’

Little Coco dimpled. ‘Sure!’ she exclaimed. ‘There’s me!’

‘Anyone else?’

‘Um . . .’ Glancing over her shoulder, she wrinkled her brow in thought. ‘There’s my big sister. And there’s Abigail. And Holly . . .’

Marcus heard his mother squeak.

‘Are there any boys?’ he asked Little Coco, who answered him cheerfully.

‘There’s Ryan,’ she offered. ‘And there’s Jake. Only Jake doesn’t play with us anymore, since he got so big.’

Holly staggered. Her knees looked as if they were about to give way, but there was nowhere for her to sit down. So she slumped against the nearest rubbish bin (which didn’t have any rubbish in it).

‘Is that Miss Molpe’s caravan?’ was Marcus’s next question. When Little Coco nodded, he said, ‘Is she in there?’

‘No. I haven’t seen her for a
long
time.’ Little Coco cocked her head at him. ‘Why? Do you want to listen to her gramophone?’

‘We want to talk to Jake Borazio,’ Holly bleated, before Marcus could stop her. He knew that even mentioning Jake would ring alarm bells among those whose job it was to keep Jake well guarded.

Sure enough, Little Coco’s expression became wary. ‘Jake’s no fun,’ she said. ‘He won’t play with you. Why do you want
him
?’

‘We don’t,’ Marcus assured her. Though he wasn’t scared of Little Coco and her friends, he knew that there might be adults to contend with. ‘Are your mum and dad around?’

‘
My
mum and dad?’ Coco sounded vague, as if parents were a concept she’d hardly encountered before. ‘I dunno. I don’t think so . . .’

‘Is your name Coco?’ Edison piped up. He was obviously fascinated. Little Coco dimpled at him.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘How did you know?’

‘Because— ouch!’ Edison jumped as Newt pinched his neck. ‘What’s
your
problem?’ he demanded.

‘You are,’ Newt rejoined.

‘I just wanted to tell her—’

‘Yeah, well,
don’t.
She’ll freak.’ Newt jerked her chin towards Big Coco, who was shaking and sniffing and wiping gobs of damp green gunge off her face. ‘We’ve already got a basket case on our hands. We don’t want another one, do we?’

Sterling, meanwhile, was thinking aloud.

‘Miss Molpe’s got to be the codename for the Command and Control program that’s running this system,’ he observed, tapping his front teeth with one finger. ‘There’s a definite pattern here, don’t you think?’ When Coco failed to acknowledge his appeal, he turned to Marcus. ‘We should check out Miss Molpe’s caravan. It might be an access point to the mainframe.’

Marcus sighed. ‘There
is
no mainframe. It’s magic,’ he groaned, wondering why Sterling couldn’t accept that. He was about to suggest that
on no account
should they go anywhere
near
Miss Molpe’s caravan when his mother leaned down to address Little Coco.

‘Hey, sweetie,’ she quavered. ‘Are – are Mr and Mrs Bradshaw here?’

Little Coco looked puzzled. ‘Who?’

‘Holly’s mum and dad.’ Holly had to swallow before continuing. ‘The ones who live in that tent.’

‘I dunno.’ Little Coco squinted at the tent in question. Then her face lit up. ‘There’s Holly!’ she cried, madly waving. ‘
Hi, Holly!
’

Without warning she bolted, making a beeline for the older, skinnier girl who was waving back at her. Marcus could see that the older girl was wearing a bikini. She had straight blonde hair.

‘Oh my God,’ his mother wailed. ‘It’s me. It’s
me.
’

‘I can’t bear it.’ Coco’s voice cracked. ‘We were so young. What happened?’

Edison eyed his stepmother in a bewildered kind of way.

‘You grew up,’ he said. ‘Everybody grows up. They have to.’

‘Unless they die,’ Marcus mumbled. By this time he had spotted other children appearing from behind rocks, cars and bushes. They were skipping out of the distant surf and crawling through tent-flaps. They were climbing down trees and surging over sand dunes.

It was like watching the slow build-up of ants around a dead lizard – and he began to feel uneasy.

‘Which tent belongs to Jake?’ he asked his mother, who shook her head.

‘Jake’s family had a caravan,’ she replied, pointing. ‘That one.’

‘We should go there first, before we get swamped by kids.’ Marcus had noted, with growing alarm, that many of the converging children were carrying sticks and boogie boards and fishing rods. ‘If Jake’s not there right now, he might drop by later. And when we go inside we can shut the kids out.’

‘Hear, hear!’ Newt’s vote of conf idence was unexpected, to say the least. ‘Good call! Let’s shut the kids out!’

Edison showed his support by saluting Marcus. Coco nodded. Sterling said, ‘What if we split into a couple of teams, one for each caravan, and meet back here in ten minutes . . . ?’

But Holly wasn’t listening. She was already halfway across the parking lot, heading for Jake’s caravan.

31

‘YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED IN THERE . . .’

K
NOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK.

‘Hello? Jake? It’s Holly Bradshaw . . .’

There was no reply. As Holly pulled open the caravan door, Marcus stood behind her, anxiously watching wave upon wave of sandy, sunburned kids close in from every direction. So far, only Little Coco and Little Holly had reached Jake’s caravan; they were tugging at Sterling’s Hawaiian shirt, nagging him to come and play – to buy them some ice-cream – to leave Jake alone. ‘You’re not allowed in there,’ they whined. ‘Jake said so. He’ll get mad. He always gets mad . . .’

Marcus tried not to look at Little Holly. He found her freckles and her pointed chin extremely disconcerting, because he wasn’t used to seeing them on such a small face.

‘Just
go
!’ he urged his mother, who didn’t need any encouragement. She yanked open the door and plunged inside, closely followed by Coco, Newt and Marcus. Edison soon joined them, with his father in tow.

When Little Coco tried to bring up the rear, it was Newt who pushed her back outside and slammed the door.

‘God, you were a pest,’ she informed her stepmother.

Jake’s caravan was one of the largest in the campground. It had a separate bedroom at one end, with a bathroom off that – plus all kinds of extra luxuries. There were flyscreens, clothes cupboards, wall-mounted fans, a dining nook, a separate lounge area, a picture window, and a built-in china cabinet. Despite the woodgrain laminex plastered over nearly every available surface, including the fridge, it would have been a nice place to live if it hadn’t been so untidy. Junk was piled up everywhere: rags, nets, shells, bottles, barbecue grills, gas cylinders, cricket bats, buckets and spades, broken umbrellas, comic books, animal bones.

Coco was appalled.

‘How can anyone
live
like this?’ she exclaimed, shocked out of her teary-eyed stupor. ‘It’s a pigsty!’

‘It’s not that bad,’ was Edison’s view. ‘It’s not super dirty, or anything.
I
could live here.’

‘That’s because you’re a boy,’ Newt said – pronouncing the word ‘boy’ with utter disdain. ‘Maybe this guy is too. A boy, I mean. Maybe he hasn’t grown up after all.’

‘Then why did that other Coco say he’d got so big?’ Marcus objected, as his mother gingerly picked up a soiled bandanna.

‘I remember this,’ she whispered. ‘He used to wear it all the time – Coco, do you remember this?’

Coco nodded. Edison, meanwhile, had slipped into the bedroom, where he was pulling open doors. ‘No one in here!’ he announced, peering into a cramped little cupboard that contained a toilet and nothing else. ‘Doesn’t look like he’s at home, eh?’

BANG-BANG-BANG!
Someone pounded on the caravan’s exterior. ‘Come out!’ a muffled voice demanded. ‘Come out and play!’

Sterling looked at his wife. ‘That’s you, isn’t it, Cokes?’ he asked.

BANG-BANG-BANG!
More thumping followed, involving more than one fist. Then came a chorus of high-pitched voices, echoing Little Coco’s entreaties.

‘Come out . . . come and play . . . you’re no fun . . . you’re not allowed in there . . .’

Newt scowled at the two women. ‘Can’t you please tell yourselves to shut up?’ she said.

But Holly wasn’t listening. She had discarded the bandanna and pounced on something else: a dog-eared notebook. ‘Oh my God,’ she croaked, flipping through its pages. ‘I just found Jake’s diary!’

‘Yeah?’ Even Sterling was interested to hear
that
. Marcus gasped, while Newt raised her eyebrows. Edison came scurrying back from the bedroom just as another volley of thumps hit the side of the caravan.

‘
I don’t know what day it is. The days don’t matter
anymore. They’re all the same. I went fishing as usual
,’ Holly read aloud. ‘Oh Coco, will you look at his spelling? Even Marcus can spell better than this!’

‘What do you mean?’ Marcus was offended. ‘I’m a really good speller!’

‘Marcus goes to school,’ Coco pointed out, as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘I bet there’s no school around here.’

THOMP!
This time the noise wasn’t caused by a fist, or even by a collection of fists. It was caused by something large and solid, and its impact made the whole caravan shudder.

‘Hey!’ Sterling boomed, with a touch of annoyance. ‘Stop that!’

‘You’d better come out!’ was someone’s squeaky retort. Then the caravan started to rock and sway so vigorously that Marcus almost fell.

‘What on earth—?’ said Holly.

‘They’re trying to push us over!’ Marcus exclaimed.

‘Hey!
Hey, stop!
’ Sterling lunged for the front door, but lost his footing as the floor dipped. He was thrown against the china cabinet.

‘
Stop it!
’ Holly shrilled. ‘
Holly Bradshaw, you stop
that immediately!
’

A burst of excited laughter was the only response. Then the caravan bounced again, before tipping sharply to one side.

With the floor on such a slope, it was impossible for anybody to reach the door.

‘They’ll roll us!’ Newt yelled, grabbing a benchtop. Outside, the cheering and chanting had swelled in volume; Marcus could no longer count the number of voices being raised. But he could tell that they all belonged to children – children who were happy and busy and having a lot of fun.

Then another voice cut through the din: a loud, deep, angry voice. ‘
Oi!
’ it thundered. ‘
What the hell do
you think you’re doing
?’

And suddenly the caravan dropped back into place.

CRASH!

It took Marcus a few seconds to recover his wits. During that time, the shocked silence outside was succeeded by a babble of plaintive explanations. ‘It’s not our fault . . . they wouldn’t come out . . . we’re sorry, Jake . . .’

‘
Get lost!
’ the deep voice roared. ‘
Piss off before I lose
my temper!
’

‘We were just trying to help
. . .

’ But Jake wasn’t impressed. ‘I’ll count to three!’ he warned. ‘One!’ A pause. ‘Two!’

He didn’t have to say ‘three’. After a short burst of scuffling and squeaking, there were no more noises from the mob of children. All Marcus could hear, as he pulled himself to his feet again, was the sound of someone tall and heavy thudding up the caravan steps and jerking the door open.

‘Who’s in there?’ Jake barked. ‘You’d better come out, or I’ll come in after you!’

32

THE TERRIBLE TRUTH

J
AKE
B
ORAZIO WAS A BIG GUY
. W
ITH HIS BROAD SHOULDERS
, great height and shaggy head, he filled the entire doorway. What’s more, his muscles were very well displayed – because he wore only a pair of frayed denim shorts, a rope belt, and a necklace made of shells, bones and teeth.

He took one look at Holly and the colour drained from his face.

‘H-Holly Bradshaw?’ he stammered.

‘Oh my God.’ Holly would have turned white too, if she hadn’t been covered in fake tan. ‘Jake. Oh my
God
.’

‘You’re still the same,’ Jake marvelled. ‘You haven’t changed a bit.’

‘Neither have you,’ Holly replied, her voice cracking on a sob.

Marcus snorted. He knew for a fact that Holly had changed; he’d seen the difference with his own eyes. And as for Jake . . . well, Jake now had a raggedly trimmed beard, as well as hair down to his shoulders. He looked like a cross between a pirate and a pro wrestler, with a bit of rock star thrown into the mix.

In the Diamond Beach brochure, he was just a skinny kid wearing board shorts.

‘Do you remember
me
, Jake?’ said Coco. ‘It’s Coco della Robbia. The one in the purple-hippo swimsuit.’

‘
Coco?
’ This time Jake sounded utterly gobsmacked. ‘
You’re
Coco?’

‘And this is my husband Sterling. And these are my children, Newt and Eddie.’

‘Stepchildren,’ Newt corrected, in a surly kind of way.

‘And this is
my
son Marcus,’ Holly croaked. ‘We’ve come to save you, Jake.’

Jake blinked. ‘
Your
son?’ he said hoarsely, staring at Marcus as he addressed Holly. ‘You got married?’

‘Well – uh – yes, but I’m not married now. Anymore.’ Holly flushed. ‘It’s complicated.’

‘Did you hear what she said, Jake?’ asked Coco, obviously surprised at his lack of enthusiasm. ‘We’ve come to take you home.’

Jake’s stunned gaze shifted in her direction, but he didn’t respond.

‘Maybe he doesn’t want to go home,’ Edison remarked. ‘It’s pretty nice here.’

‘No.’ Holly shook her head. ‘Jake, you can’t stay. This is a bad choice. This isn’t real.’