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A Visit from Spiderman
‘Can I have some breakfast?’
Amy looked up, to find Ty standing right in front of the tent, watching her. How had he got there so quickly and silently? A matter of seconds before he’d been nowhere to be seen. It had been a long night; the sounds of raucous laughter from the tent at the top of the site had woken her every time she started drifting off to sleep. It wasn’t until after 2 am that the noise had subsided. Harry, thankfully, had slept through all of it undisturbed. He had always been a heavy sleeper; a handy thing on a campsite. He was still asleep now.
‘Isn’t your mum getting you something for breakfast?’
‘Nah. She’s wrecked. I got cereal from the car, but there’s no milk. I’m dead hungry.’ His unflinching gaze didn’t leave her face. He hadn’t got dressed yet, but he didn’t seem too bothered about being seen out and about in red-and-blue Spiderman pyjamas. His feet were bare.
‘If you’ve got a bowl to eat it out of, I guess I can find you some milk for your breakfast.’
‘Ta,’ he said, bringing out his bowl of dry cereal from behind his back. He’d dropped a lot of it on the way across the campsite, so she filled it up from Harry’s special box of Frosties, the holiday treat no-one else was allowed to eat. She couldn’t leave the kettle; she was waiting for it to boil for her morning cup of tea.
‘Are you doing anything nice today?’
‘Dunno. Might play in the stream. Mum won’t be up for ages.’
‘Aren’t you going out anywhere?’
‘Nah. Mum’s dead cross ‘cos there aren’t no shops. Might not stay anyway. Karly reckons the old woman from the farm’s gonna chuck us off ‘coz some daft cow in the tent next door complained,’ he said with some relish.
‘It was late when you went to bed last night, wasn’t it?’ she said.
‘Don’t matter. Got thrown off the other site yesterday, that’s how we ended up here. Oh, look, here comes that man. I’m going. Thanks for the breakfast.’
‘You’re welcome, Ty.’
Matt came to stand beside the tent and they watched Ty head up the field in silence. He was eating his breakfast as he went, spilling a small amount at every step.
‘That poor lad. He’s no older than our two, but he’s got eyes like a little old man. He’s been down looking for something to eat because his mother’s too hung over to get up,’ said Amy.
‘We might not be perfect as parents, but at least our two know where we are when they need us,’ Matt said.
As if on cue, there was the sound of the door being unzipped in her tent, and a fuzzy-headed, bleary-eyed Harry appeared.
‘Hi Mam. Hi Matt. Is Oliver awake yet?’
‘Why don’t you go and see?’ Matt replied. As Harry disappeared into the campervan he turned to Amy. ‘It’s not easy for kids these days, is it? I mean, our two both have their problems, but at the end of the day, they’re the lucky ones. They’ve both got someone who’s always on their side and they’ll work out their issues. Not all kids do.’
The kettle came to the boil with a shrieking whistle and at the same moment the boys burst out of the campervan, arguing about Goat Gunge.
‘Tea?’ Amy offered.
‘I’d love some. I’m thinking I should have a word with Mrs. Thompson about the noise last night,’ Matt opened a camping chair and sat down.
‘Did it wake you up, too?’ Amy made him a cup of tea in Harry’s mug.
‘Several times. That and the fact Oliver was awake, afraid the drowned ghosts might come and get him.’
‘I’m sorry about that. I knew he wasn’t looking very happy about the story.’ She held the mug out to him and he leaned forward to take it.
‘He would insist on saying he wanted you to go on. You gave him plenty of chances to stop. I wish … he’s so delicate and sensitive. I want him to be more confident, to stand on his own two feet more.’
‘It’s hardly surprising he’s delicate, given everything he’s been through,’ Amy said.
‘I know.’ He paused before he continued, blowing the steam from his tea, almost as if he was trying to judge her possible reaction to what he had to say before he said it. ‘I don’t like saying this about my own son, but I want him to stop playing the victim so much. I know Stella’s death hit him hard. Of course it did. But he uses it as an excuse for everything.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with a lad being sensitive.’ She grimaced, thinking of Harry who was the very opposite of a sensitive little flower. He was more like the giant booted foot carelessly standing on it.
