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‘Tell him, Dad! It’s not right, tell him!’ Oliver called out, his voice quavering, and Matt appeared from the campervan.
‘What’s going on, boys?’ Amy asked as Oliver raced past her towards his father.
‘He says it’s true and the ghosts were in that horrible cottage! I don’t want to stay here. I want to go home. I want my muuuuuuuumy.’ He burst into the inevitable wails of horror and flung himself into his father’s arms while Harry smirked behind him.
Amy was suddenly angry — with Oliver for making such a fuss and Harry for causing it when it he’d promised not to — but mostly with Oliver, because he seemed to be controlling her life right now. Of course, she couldn’t shout at him, so Harry got the brunt of it.
‘Harry, what did I tell you?’ she snapped.
‘That the people in the story lived here and they were real.’ He crossed his arms as Oliver continued to wail.
‘No, Harry. I told you NOT to talk to Oliver about it!’
‘Just because he knows how to spell g-nat.’
‘This has nothing to do with gnats.’
‘He started it.’
‘It doesn’t matter who started it. You shouldn’t have continued it!’ For the second time today, she heard her mother speaking through her.
‘Well, he said you were a —’ He glanced at Oliver, who had buried his head in Matt’s shoulder. He stopped.
‘He said your mum was a what?’ Matt asked, far more calmly than James would have done in these circumstances.
‘It’s one of them words the head teacher doesn’t like. A four-letter-word.’
‘Don’t say the word, but can you tell us what it means?’ Matt asked.
‘It means a girl dog.’
‘It’s got five letters, stupid!’ Oliver couldn’t resist the temptation to tell Harry he was wrong.
‘Did you call Harry’s mum that?’ Matt, who had crouched down to hug his sobbing son, stood up and took a step backwards to look at Oliver critically as Oliver hesitated to reply. His tears had dried up, as quickly as they started.
‘He did! He really did! He said she was one of them and she wanted to do sex with you. And I said no she didn’t because sex is gross, and she’d never do that, and then he said I couldn’t spell gnat, and then I might have said something about the ghosts.’
Matt seemed to be finding the clouds very interesting, and his mouth was suddenly twitching. Amy forced herself to look at the ground and avoid meeting his eyes.
‘None of that was very nice, was it?’ he said, after a short pause as he tried to control the twitching. ‘And I don’t want you to discuss what happened between Amy and me. It was grown-up stuff. It’s nothing for you two to worry about, and it won’t happen again. I think you should both say sorry and —’
There was no stopping Harry. ‘Look, Oliver. This is your dad and my mum!’ He put his hands around the back of his neck and mimed kissing. ‘Oooh, snog me!’ he teased. That was one of Harry’s big problems; he never knew when to stop.
‘Harry!’ Amy snapped. ‘You won’t get today’s sticker for doing what you’re told if you don’t stop right now.’
Harry, who had his back to them all, carried on. ‘I want a big kiss!’ he said in a silly voice. ‘A big, sloppy —’
Oliver launched himself forwards. This wasn’t pretend, or even half-hearted. He literally threw his whole bodyweight at Harry, who had his back turned. They rolled to the ground, where Oliver tried to punch Harry and Harry squirmed and tried to kick Oliver. There was a lot of undignified grunting but neither of them seemed to be landing many blows on the other.
‘Harry, stop kicking!’ Amy yelled, trying to keep his legs still as Matt grabbed hold of Oliver and pulled him to his feet again and away from Harry. Harry tried to kick Oliver’s feet out from under him. He missed, spectacularly, and kicked over one of the camping chairs.
‘Stop it right now, Harry, or I’m going to take the tent down and we’ll go home. Do you hear me?’ she shouted at Harry, who rolled over onto his knees, covering yet another set of clothes in mud.
‘Go on then. I don’t want to stay here anyway. I want to go home!’ he said, glaring at her. ‘I want to go to Florida with Dad and Laurie now. ‘Cos Oliver’s not going to be there!’
‘I want to go home too,’ Oliver yelled at his dad. ‘I want to go home. I hate it here. I hate it here; I hate her, I hate him, and I hate you. You are all …’ Panting, he struggled to find a word bad enough to describe Matt, Amy and Harry. ‘You are all BOLLICKS.’
The two boys stood glaring at each other in silence, until a quiet round of applause cut across the little tableaux.
‘Better than Eastenders, them two!’ said Ty’s mum, grinning as she passed them on her way to the old barn with a bag of laundry.
