The End is Where We Begin by Maria Goodin (open ebook .txt) 📕

let’s go,” mumbled Max. He sounded loud, right next to my ear. Perhaps he was loud, I don’t know. But just then the third man – the one who had been standing smoking a cigarette as if nothing unusual was happening – turned in our direction.

“Shit!” I heard Tom whisper, and he suddenly jerked backwards, pulling me with him.

But in that split second, just before I was wrenched away, the guy lying on the ground lifted his head feebly, gazing straight towards me.

And I saw who he was.

There was a scramble behind the shed, each of us grabbing at each other’s arms, pulling at each other’s T-shirts with no particular aim in mind. We were like a flock of panic-stricken sheep, fussing frantically but going nowhere. It seemed like Michael made a move to get away, flee in the direction we had just come from, but the rest of us were driven by the instinct to stay as still and as quiet as possible and we grabbed at him, pulling him into a huddle. If we’d have let him go, if we’d have all run then, would that have made all the difference?

We froze, none of us daring to move a muscle, clutching at each other, our faces close.

My heart was pounding, and my legs felt weak. I had never seen anything like that in my life – not that wasn’t on TV. The thud of the boot, the cry of pain. Maybe we should have run, but it seemed too late now. Now we just had to stay quiet and hope we hadn’t been seen.

I tried to tune into the distant thump of the fairground music, searching for any indication that civilisation was still nearby. But all I could hear was our breathing.

Michael’s breath was coming in short, shaky bursts in my right ear. And in my left ear, Tom was breathing quietly, almost silently, as if he was fighting the urge to breathe at all. But Max, opposite me in the huddle, was breathing heavily, and I wanted to reach out and smother his mouth with my hand. In the silence, his breathing seemed too loud, just like everything about Max – too big, too heavy, too noisy. I wanted to tell him to shut up, but I didn’t dare speak. Squashed into the middle of the huddle was the polar bear, and I dipped my head, breathing into the soft fur to muffle the sound, feeling the warmth of my own candyfloss breath.

For what seemed like forever, all I could hear was the sound of our breathing, the four of us, clinging together.

We waited.

I think now that we should have run.

I remember her saying: “This one’s for two strawberry laces and a flying saucer, okay?”

We were lying on our fronts in the long grass. Libby placed her lollipop into her mouth, picked up her binoculars and handed them to me.

“What’s that swimming in front of Carpe Diem?”

“Carp what?” I asked through a mouthful of gummy bears.

She removed her lollipop. “Carpe Diem. The blue boat two down from ours.”

“Is that French or something?”

“No, silly, it’s Latin. It means seize the day.”

“Stupid name for a boat,” I muttered.

I put the binoculars to my eyes, chewing lazily. Magnified grass stems, bulrushes, sun-dappled canal water, a heron – they all swam in front of my vision as I tried to find a familiar point of focus. I scanned the marina until Libby’s narrowboat – Isabelle Blue – suddenly came into view.

I held the binoculars steady. I could see my mum and Libby’s mum sitting in the bow of the boat, slumped in their deckchairs. Libby’s mum was smoking a cigarette; mine was sipping a glass of wine. I swung the binoculars to the right, past Lady Grey whose roof was covered in blossoming flowers pots, and onto Carpe Diem, a run-down boat with two bicycles and several bags of coal on its roof. There in the water a little black bird bobbed around in circles.

“A moorhen,” I said confidently. Placing the binoculars down on the grass, I held out my hand for my prize.

“Nope,” said Libby, smugly, “it’s a coot.”

“Oh, I knew that,” I moaned.

“Red for moorhen, white for coot, don’t forget it,” she grinned. “I get to pick three.”

I threw my paper bag at her. It annoyed me that she knew so much stuff. I was meant to be smart, but she knew tonnes of stuff I didn’t. And she didn’t even have to go to school.

“Cola bottle, shrimp and… oooh, twisty marshmallow thing, I love those.”

She dropped my sweets into her own paper bag, which by now was looking significantly weightier than mine, and sat up cross-legged in the grass.

“I don’t want to play this anymore,” I said, worried that I’d soon have no more sweets left.

“Do you want to go down to the bird hide?” she asked.

“Nah,” I said, pulling up a piece of grass.

“Do you want to go build a den?”

I shook my head. It was hot and I was feeling lazy and tired. I wondered if my mum was ready to go home yet, but once she got talking to Libby’s mum, there was no stopping her.

“Do you want to kiss me?”

I squinted at Libby. She took her lollipop out of her mouth and examined its decreasing size, a string of long brown hair falling down over her face.

“What for?” I asked.

She tucked the lollipop back into the side of her cheek and shrugged. “I dunno. To see what it’s like.”

I pulled up another blade of grass and twiddled it between my thumb and forefinger.

“Mmm… I dunno. I don’t mind. If you want to, I guess.”

“Sit up then,” she ordered.

I slowly lifted myself up. My arms seemed to have gone to sleep.

“You have to close your eyes,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ear.

“Why?”

“’Cause that’s how you do it, silly.”

I closed my eyes and waited, the light filtering through my eyelids.

“Where are you going to kiss me?” I asked, suddenly opening my eyes