Breaking East by Bob Summer Page A

He’ll groom you to take over when he retires.’ He smiled at me. The salt patched in little circles around the stubble on his chin. ‘See?’
    Talk about delusional. Extreme positive thinking at its best, Dad would love him. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘it was always my plan to get promoted as soon as possible, even be the boss one day. Blowing my cover and getting twelve shades kicked out of me is all a part of that process, of course.’
    He nodded and pursed his lips. ‘Mm, yes. Well, it’s good to know everything’s going so well, to plan as it were.’
    We both studied the sea. I still couldn’t see the fascination. It didn’t look like it might be about to do anything spectacular, it just sat there, splashing about.
    I took a deep breath. ‘I do understand why you might be a teeny bit cheesed off with me too though.’
    He pulled a stern face. ‘Yes, I bloody am.’
    I laughed.
    ‘No. I bloody am. Why are you laughing?’
    I put on a mock voice. ‘You bloody are, are you? Bloody hell. Are you bloody, bloody?’
    ‘What’s wrong with bloody?’
    ‘Bloody cricket and horses … pass the bloody decanter.’
    ‘Have you suffered a knock on the head or something?’ He shook his head. ‘Man, you batty-crazy woman.’
    We spent some time studying the file and came to the conclusion Gold-tooth must have been the main signatory. ‘His name has to be Crawlsfeld,’ I said.
    ‘It kind of suits him.’ Stuart had drip dried but his hair looked like he’d spent an hour preening. He screwed his nose up. ‘Creepy Crawly Crawlsfeld.’
    The children had been sent to a place in North Wales called Sapton Manor. There were glossy photos of what looked like a holiday park with ponies and go-karts. Your child is our future read the tagline.
    ‘It all looks so … well, nice.’ I said.
    ‘Yeah.’ Stuart didn’t sound convinced. ‘It doesn’t make sense though, does it? If it is all so nice, surely it would cost the parents to send kids there, not the other way around.’
    ‘We need to go and check it out,’ I said.
    ‘Mm.’
    ‘We’ll get the money off Carl and your dad, and buy them back.’
    He gawped at me like I’d suggested we hurdle the moon. ‘We can’t go back into Basley. We’ll get crucified. Or worse, we’ll be arrested.’
    ‘Well then we’ll get them back some other way. If we have to leave Basley anyway, we might as well go north and suss the place out. What else are we going to do?’
    ‘Given all the people looking for us, we can hardly hail a taxi, can we?’
    So much for positivity. ‘Well, there are other modes of transport,’ I said. ‘If we can get to Craffid, we could jump a cargo train. When it slowed at a junction or something.’
    Stuart scoffed. ‘Um, you’ve been watching too many movies. And in any case, how far are you going to leap with that gammy knee, uh?’
    I stretched my leg and winced. ‘It is a little sore, granted.’
    Stuart gave me a told-you-so look. ‘Let’s get a decent night’s sleep in so we’re fresh for tomorrow.’ He reached into the hut and unpacked the last of the food from his backpack. ‘The only way I know to get on any transport is to pay top dollar so you’re right, we need money. We’re going to have to hope one of us dreams up an idea to get some.’
    Everything, everything, came down to money in the end.

Chapter 11
    I woke early and lay listening to gulls screech and the ocean slap and shrush on the wet sand. Stuart didn’t emit so much as a heavy breath let alone a snore - a silent sleeper and another box ticked on the look-at-me-I’m-such-a-perfect-specimen form. I bet I’d snorted and dribbled half the night. I crept out of the hut leaving him curled under a towel and hobbled to the edge of the sea. Its vastness was emphasised in the early light, and it lay so still, as if it might be preparing to pounce. The waves lapped no bigger than puppy licks onto my toes and the water felt dense like cool milk, but looked clear and