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“Let’s All Put Our Heads in the Water”
By the time they’d finished lunch Harry was cold, so he put his clothes back on and started to demand they go back to the campsite so he could get warm in the shower. Amy was keen to stay out for as long as possible; he’d be bored back at the campsite, and she wanted to give Oliver space.
‘Why don’t we make some paper boats?’ She opened the backpack to look for her sketchbook, which she carried everywhere with her in case she had an idea for a new project. ‘When I was a little girl Granny Jen showed me how to make paper boats and we used to sail them down the stream.’
‘Is this the stream that goes through the campsite?’
‘That’s right. The boats will sail down past the little cottage, then the campsite. They might end up in the big lake!’ She tore a few pages from the sketchbook; they would only make tiny boats, but they were still boats. She showed Harry how to fold them. Hers wasn’t great, his even less so, but they would be good enough to float down the river.
‘Does Granny Jen really make these boats too?’ Harry said, eyeing his suspiciously. ‘I don’t think they’re going to float very far.’
‘Yes, she did. She taught me how to make them when I was your age.’
‘I want to write on mine,’ he announced.
‘That’s a nice idea. Do you want to give it a name?’
‘Yes. I’m going to call it Swallows like the story. I’m going to write a message on it for Granny Jen, and then it can race down the river.’
‘A message for Granny Jen?’ Her breath caught in her throat. ‘What would you like to write?’
‘It’s private. Just for me and granny.’
‘That’s a great idea,’ she said, trying not to let her tears spill over. ‘And I will too.’
Harry took the pen she offered him and started writing. She wished she could see what he’d written, but he was determined not to let her, and folded it up again, keeping it in his hand so she couldn’t read it.
‘Do you sometimes miss Granny Jen?’ she asked as he handed her the pen. He shook his head vehemently and looked away, and she knew not to press him further. She scribbled her own note. Wish you were here: trite and forthright but nonetheless heartfelt. She folded up her boat with the message on it.
‘Right, we’ll let them go. If we go round the edge of the tarn to where the beck flows out, we’ll try there.’ She left their picnic things sheltered underneath the rocks and led the way between tussocky grass and squelchy mud until they reached the start of the beck. ‘Try not to fall in, won’t you, Harry? When we let go, keep an eye on the boats until they get to that overhanging tree branch there, and the one that reaches it first is the winner. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘One, two, three, GO!’ she shouted, and then delayed throwing hers ever so slightly so Harry’s had a head-start. Even so, hers caught the current and Harry’s washed up behind a rock, so he had to poke it with a stick to set it free, and hers reached the tree branch long before his.
‘That wasn’t fair. Mine got stuck. Let’s do it again.’
‘Okay, best of three. Let’s make some more boats.’
Once again Harry wrote a secret message on his before he launched it with all due ceremony into the stream, and this time it shot away down the river and away round the bend, leaving Amy’s boat bobbing in the shallows by the bank.
‘Last one, then. Are you ready?’ she asked as they finished their third boat.
‘Ready. Go!’ He threw his boat as far as he could to give it a head start.
‘That was cheating!’ she laughed. ‘You didn’t give it a one-two-three, and you threw it!’
‘I’m going to win!’
‘What are you doing?’ said a voice from behind them. ‘Why are you littering?’
‘We’re racing boats. I’m winning. D’you want to make one?’ Harry said without turning round.
Oliver Sutherland stood a few steps away, watching them cautiously. His dad was following him across the coarse grass to the edge of the beck where they stood.
‘It’s littering. You shouldn’t be littering.’
‘It’s not littering, it’s racing. We’re sending messages to Granny with paper boats.’
