Breaking East by Bob Summer Page B

refreshing. I stooped to scoop and bathe the stickiness off my face. My nose had bled again during the night and black crusts pulled at my lip. I must have looked like walking road-kill.
    We’d squabbled a little the night before and failed to agree on what we should do next. Stuart wanted to speak to his dad about money, but I didn’t think it was such a good idea. We’d thrown the pros and cons around until we’d agreed to sleep on it. Back to back.
    ‘Yeeeeehahhh!!!’ Stuart sent me leaping out of my skin as he ran past me into the water. I stumbled backwards, falling to a sit in the wet, and caught a flash of Stuart’s white bum disappearing into the water.
    ‘Argh. Now look.’ I only had the one set of clothes and they were already grubby enough. I stood and swiped at the wet sand stuck to my rear.
    Stuart’s head broke the surface. ‘Come on in. The salt water will do you good.’
    Yeah, right, like I was about to strip and flop my fleshy bits around in front of anybody, least of all him with his six-packed gut and tight bum cheeks. ‘We haven’t got time.’ I stomped off to my rock and stayed behind it until he’d got out of the water and got dressed. Me, shy. I would never have credited it. We needed to get away from the place, before it turned me soft.
    As Stuart pushed the last of his gear into the bag, I tried to convince him that Carl would be a better source of funds. I struggled to stop short of pulling rank and tried to tell him gently. ‘I’m experienced at this sort of stuff. I know how people in the resistance and Reds from the Law think.’ Stuart, for all his money and education, struck me as being pretty thick. ‘Think about it.’ I pressed on. ‘Nobody will expect us to go back to Carl again. Whereas everybody’s going to think you’ll turn to your dad, right?’
    ‘Everybody probably will, yes. Then, after they’ve thought we’ll go to my dad, because that would be the obvious thing to do, they’ll think there’s no way we’ll do the obvious.’ Stuart used the tone that jangled my nerves, the one that people like him reserved for idiots. ‘Which is why they won’t bother watching him,’ he said. ‘And the one person who won’t be expecting me to go to my dad is Dad himself. He knows how much I hate him and how I hate going to him for help.’ He raised a finger. ‘Usually. Trust me, he will be totally relaxed thinking he’s finally got shot of me. See? I’ve thought it all through.’ He stood, slung his bag over his shoulder and tapped his temple with his finger. ‘Genius.’ He walked away.
    I limped after him. ‘But they’d be even less likely to think I’d go back to Carl. I mean he’s got to be mad at me, only an utter plum-head would go and ask for payback, right?’
    ‘So,’ he said in a sing-songy, take-the-mick voice, ‘you admit, you’d be a bloody plum-head to go and see Carl, right?’
    ‘So,’ I sang right back, ‘you’re just going to waltz up and knock on your dad’s door, right?’
    ‘Nooo.’ He drew the word out like he spoke to a child. ‘I shall arrange for him to drop it somewhere. The quarry strikes me as a good potential spot. We can see people coming for miles from up there.’
    I had to admit, the quarry was isolated and barren so not too bad a location for a secret meet. And I didn’t really want to risk another pasting. It hurt. ‘How do you know your dad will do it? You don’t want to make contact if all he’s going to do is squeal to the Law.’
    ‘Easy,’ he said. ‘I’ll threaten to tell the Law I’ve got something stashed at the house, lemondrops or something, and there’ll be a bunch of Reds escorting me, in shackles, to his front door before dark. With a warrant.’ He gave me a smug grin. ‘He won’t risk that. All that shame and embarrassment on his doorstep? His tart would throw a right wobbler. Trust me, once she goes off on one there’s no shutting her up. Especially if they get thrown out of the