Chapter 34
Finn
It’s the weekend, it’s the summer hols, and we’ve come on holiday to the aptly named Sunnywell Bay in Weymouth, so of course it’s raining.
Fat droplets thud against the caravan roof in a way that’s at once relaxing and stress inducing.
We only have two more days here, and I’d rather not waste them by rotting in this tin can.
The forecast is showing unsettled for the rest of the day, so I’m scrabbling around in my brain trying to remember the last time I was here—aged fifteen—and what indoor activities there are nearby we can shelter with.
There’s the swimming pool, of course, and the clubhouse, and the arcades, but I’ve already spent enough money on the teddy grabbers to warrant taking out a second mortgage.
I’m the first one up. Pi and Logan are still both sound asleep in the caravan’s surprisingly comfortable beds.
I’m making myself a sugary tea, because the only coffee Pi brought requires grinding and I don’t want to wake him.
Plus, there’s a core memory in there somewhere.
Of lying in my caravan bunk, Leoni across from me, the plunky noises of rain above me, the thunkthunkthunk of seagulls using the roof as a runway, and the soft tickling of a teaspoon knocking against the side of a porcelain cup.
It would usually be followed by the smell of bacon sizzling, but neither Pi nor Logan eat pork, so I have to make do with my memories.
The TV plays on low volume in the background, and I sit beside the window and watch the specks—sailing boats—on the horizon.
I have never felt more at peace.
A few minutes later, or it could be closer to an hour, Pi stirs. I hear him clambering out of bed, flushing the toilet, washing his hands and face. He walks into the open-plan space, takes a clean glass out of the cupboard and fills it with water.
“How ya going?” he says, sitting at the opposite end of the caravan couch.
He’s wearing only a pair of torturously thin shorts and his indoor “thongs.” His stomach muscles bunch as he sits, and his tan skin crinkles around his belly.
His ordinarily unruly surfer curls are sticking out at even more haphazard angles.
He’s so fucking beautiful that every cell in my body physically aches.
“Alright, pard.”
Pi sips his water. “So, last night was fun, huh?”
I can think of a thousand more appropriate adjectives to describe last night. Incredible, phenomenal, momentous, brain-chemistry-altering, life-changing, things-will-never-be-the-same-againing.
“Yeah, it was really fun,” I say instead.
He runs his free hand through the back of his hair, then places his glass on the side table. “We should maybe . . . talk about what that . . . means for us?”
I open my mouth to speak, but at that second Logan comes tearing into the living room and launches himself at me, jumping onto my lap.
“Woah, woah,” I say, trying to find somewhere safe to place my half-drunk tea. It’s no longer hot, but I still don’t need to be paying additional carpet cleaning fees on top of the caravan rental.
As soon as I’ve settled the mug on the table, I welcome Logan into my arms and repeatedly kiss his forehead until my lips go numb.
“Morning, me ’ansum. How’d you sleep?” I say.
“Good,” he replies.
“Any cool dreams?” I ask.
“I had a dream that Nanny’s hair catched on fire.”
“Which nanny?”
“Nanny Shell.”
“Oh, that’s good, then. At least it’s not Nanny Kel.” I turn to Pi because he’s looking at me with an eyebrow raised and a barely suppressed smile. “Nanny Shell is Jody’s mum. Short for Michelle. She’s actually lush. I shouldn’t be celebrating her hair catching on fire.”
“And then Steven catched on fire too, and I found five pound coins on the beach.”
I nod. “Steven is their cat.”
“Can I have pancakes for breakfast?” Logan asks.
“Maybe.” I lift him off me and dump him onto the empty couch cushion between Pi and me. “I need to check if we’ve got enough eggs.”
“Forecast doesn’t look too great,” Pi says, staring at the TV. I can’t see the screen from where I am, but the local weather updates wouldn’t have changed that much in the last thirty minutes.
“What do you want to do today, Spider-Man?” I ask Logan.
“Ooh, can we play the dare game?” he says.
I crack two eggs into a big Pyrex jug, guestimate what a hundred grams of flour might look like, and by-eye three hundred mils of milk. “I don’t think Uncle Aiden wants to play the dare game.”
“Aww.” Logan slumps.
“Yeah, no, we can play the dare game. What do you have to do?” Pi says.
“Bruh, okay . . .” Logan starts. “So you get like four or ten or two or six dares and you have to do them, but if you don’t want to do them, you can do a veto on them.
But you only get to do a veto like two or five or one or three times.
And if you run out of vetoes, you have to do the dare, and if you don’t, you lose. ”
Pi looks at me for the translation.
“Basically,” I say as I click the gas on and light up the front left ring.
“You each get a certain amount of dares that you can give to the other person. Say you have six dares, yeah? You’re allowed half that number, so three, in vetoes.
You can veto any dare you don’t want to do, but once you’ve used up all your vetoes, that’s it.
” I take a deep breath. “Trust me, you will need those vetoes with the nonsense my son thinks up.”
Logan screams with laughter. “Unless you really like poking your finger in Gristle’s bumhole.”
“A lot of them involve bums and farts and poo. Just FYI,” I add.
“Okay, yes. I see how the vetoes might be useful,” Pi says.
I’m making eyes at him as I whisk the batter. “This is your chance to gracefully back out now. No one will think any less of you.”
“I will,” Logan says.
Pi smothers his smile with his hand. “Okay, I’m in. Let’s do this. How many dares do we have each?”
I look at Logan. “How long do you want the game to last?”
“All day. Until bedtime,” he replies.
“So . . . ten dares each?”
“YEAH!”
“Remember the rules from last time, okay? Nothing dangerous and nothing involving nudity.”
“Fine . . .” Logan says with a sigh. “Dad, first dare, are you ready?”
I’m looking at Pi with a practiced, patient expression when I say, “Hit me.”
“I dare you to give all the pancakes to me.”
Pi tilts his head towards the window to hide his laughter from Logan.
“Veto.”
“I dare you to cannonball off the diving board,” Logan says.
“Who’s that dare for? Me or Aiden?” I ask, though it feels so weird to call Pi Aiden.
Logan shrugs. “Both? No, just you, Dad.”
We’re floating about in the middle of the holiday park’s pool. Because it’s August, it’s the weekend, and it’s still raining outside, the pool is heaving.
“There’s a sign on the wall that specifically says no cannonballing. We could get thrown out,” I reply. Though at this point my fingers have turned to prunes, so that might not be a bad thing.
“The sign also says no peeing in the pool and I already peed in it an infinity billion times,” Logan says, laughing.
“Urgh, that’s grotty!” Pi launches a tidal wave in Logan’s direction. Logan shrieks and splashes him back.
I only have one veto left since I used the other four to escape licking an old man’s ice cream outside the campsite’s shop, licking the old man himself, giving my child all the pancakes, and stealing someone’s Porsche.
That last one was tempting, though, not gonna lie there, but we had to upgrade the rules to include nothing dangerous or illegal.
Logan has two vetoes remaining, and Pi is still in possession of four vetoes.
He used one to negate eating a whole jar of cockles.
A wise decision considering all three of us are wearing open-toed shoes.
I heave myself up the little metal ladder and walk slappily to the deep end.
There isn’t a diving board as such, it’s more where the edge of the pool bows inwards and flattens down, but we’ve witnessed more than a few kids jumping into the water from this vantage point, so the area itself is relatively clear of people.
I wait until an older woman swimming breaststroke moves away from the immediate fallout zone.
“Dad!” Logan yells, giving me a thumbs-up.
I take one step back, and another, then I give a little run forward, fire myself into the air, tuck my knees up to my chest and my hands under my butt, and let gravity take care of the rest. I hit the surface sideways, like a meteor, sending a tsunami up in every direction.
A whistle blows. I shake the water from my face and find the source. A girl, no older than eighteen, wearing a yellow Sunnywell Bay LIFE GUARD polo shirt, is staring right at me. She shakes her head from side to side, but I can see the smile she’s desperately trying to hide.
Logan wants to ride the waterslides a few more times, so we all climb out of the pool, and Pi and I take turns to sit with him since he’s just under the height limit to go by himself.
We stay until his lips turn blue, and then because he’s so reluctant to leave, Pi dares him.
Logan ums and ahhs for ages before the cold finally gets to him and he relents to a towel being draped over his shoulders.
The changing rooms are manic, so we get dressed in one of the family cubicles together.
Pi and I make a concerted effort not to glance at each other for too long.
To distract ourselves, we discuss what we should have for tea.
Logan dares me to make sundaes for everyone.
I agree, but as a grown-up compromise, we decide that fish and chips would be a good after-swim snack to refuel our aching, chlorinated muscles.