Bright Young Things (39 page)

Anne imagines never seeing another Tango commercial or Levi’s campaign. She imagines not drinking Coke again, or going to McDonalds. She imagines not paying council tax and rent (soon, her parents have threatened), and not buying travel cards and magazines and videogames. She imagines not living in a world with stupid people and racism and violence and big corporations. She imagines living in a world in which people don’t travel, all energy is renewable, and nature is just, well, natural. Whatever she said to Paul last night, it would be pretty cool.

‘Hey,’ says Paul, walking towards her, carrying the brown suitcase and some twine.

‘Hey,’ she says back. ‘Where’s the dead body?’

He kisses her wet forehead. ‘On its way.’

Soon, Jamie and Bryn emerge from the house. They have done what Thea said and used a sheet to transport the body, which is itself covered by another sheet. They all walk to the cliff edge. The waves below are at least five metres high. Each one smashes at the cliff face as if attacking it.

‘Glad I’m not going out in that,’ says Bryn.

‘Me too,’ says Anne.

Bryn and Jamie lower the sheet on to the ground.

‘Aren’t you going to put him into the boat?’ asks Paul.

‘Maybe we should put him in the boat when we get down there,’ suggests Bryn.

‘No,’ says Paul. ‘If we tie him strongly to the boat up here, then it’ll be easier.’

‘I think so too,’ says Anne.

‘It’s going to be really slippery going down the cliff,’ says Jamie.

‘Then we’ll have to be careful,’ says Paul. ‘Come on, get him in the boat.’

Bryn and Jamie pick up two corners of the sheet each and lift the body off the ground. They start swinging it horizontally like a hammock, aiming at the boat.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ says Anne. ‘Just slide him in vertically.’

In the end the procedure looks like something Anne saw on the in-flight safety manual on the way to California. The dead man slips off the sheet and into the boat as if he is alive and has just been rescued from a plane. He lands there with a thwack, lying in the exact same position as he was in upstairs when they first discovered him.

Paul starts unravelling some twine.

‘Anyone know any good knots?’ he asks.

No one does, so he just improvises. Once he’s finished, the man looks quite secure. Paul has looped the twine around his arms and legs and then through the ropes on the sides of the rubber boat. Then he’s made a few more loops around the dead guy’s middle and tied several more knots to secure him.

‘He’s not coming out of that,’ says Jamie, smiling.

‘The water’ll tighten the ropes as well,’ says Bryn.

‘What?’ says Anne.

‘When the rope gets wet, the knots will become tighter,’ he explains.

‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Cool.’

‘What about his horrible suitcase?’ says Paul. ‘I thought it could go too.’

‘You should have tied it on with him,’ says Jamie.

‘No,’ says Paul. ‘I had a better idea.’

He opens the suitcase and takes out the mask.

‘Are you going to put it on him?’ asks Bryn, laughing.

‘Let me do it,’ says Jamie, taking the mask.

He pulls it over the man’s head. ‘This is for Emily,’ he mumbles.

‘We’d better not give him the knife,’ says Anne. ‘It’ll deflate the boat.’

Paul takes it and throws it over the cliff into the sea.

Bryn’s pulled the syringe out of the suitcase. He looks uncomfortable.

‘I’ve never touched one of these,’ he says.

‘What are you going to—’ begins Jamie, but Bryn’s already stuck the syringe through the mask and into the man’s forehead.

‘Have we gone mad?’ asks Anne, laughing and shivering in the cold.

‘No,’ says Paul. ‘We’re just making him easier to spot.’

‘Oh. Well in that case . . .’ Anne takes one of the dildos and sticks it in his open mouth.

The others laugh.

‘Cool,’ says Jamie. ‘Where shall we put the other two?’

‘Don’t even go there,’ says Anne, and throws them over the cliff into the water below. She also throws the blindfold and the sewing kit. The suitcase is now empty, so she throws that, too.

‘What about that spider?’ asks Bryn.

‘What, Sebastian?’ says Paul.

‘You called it Sebastian?’ says Jamie.

‘Yeah. Well, Anne did. What about him?’

‘Shall we send him away too?’

‘No!’ wails Anne. ‘He’ll drown.’

‘It would be a bit cruel,’ says Paul.

‘But we’re sending our fears away with him,’ says Bryn.

‘Not that one,’ says Paul firmly. ‘It’s not sinister like the others. It’ll be all right.’

‘Did you write the note?’ Anne asks Jamie.

‘Yep,’ he says, waving it around.

‘What does it say?’ asks Bryn.

‘Just what Thea said.’

Anne takes it from Jamie and looks at it. He’s written it on a piece of blue paper. It says:
I’ve kidnapped six people and they’re on the island I’ve just floated from. Please rescue them. They are the ‘Bright Young Things’ you probably know about. The ones who went missing on 6 September 1999
.

‘Cool,’ she says, giving it back to him.

‘Where’s it going to go?’ asks Paul.

‘In a plastic bag in his pocket,’ says Jamie. ‘I’ll do it now.’

He seems to take ages fiddling with the bag and sticking it in the man’s pocket.

‘Let’s go, then,’ says Bryn.

Getting the boat down the cliff path is an inch-by-inch process, which is slow and cold and wet. They could have slid it down the mud, but there are too many prickly plants and sharp rock edges. No one wants to burst the boat. Anne is at the back with Paul, walking forwards. Jamie and Bryn are at the front going backwards, constantly looking over their shoulders for edges and things they might slip on. Now Thea’s cut this path, there are no big plants or stinging nettles to get in their way. And it’s not too treacherous in itself, going down here – there are no vertical drops or anything – but no one wants to fall or slip and risk losing the boat over the edge. Paul explains all the way down that it has to launch properly, and that they have to make it land the right way up. Bryn says it would be easier if they could switch on the outboard motor, but they’ve left it at the top. There’d be no safe way of turning it on without being in the water, and no one’s getting into this stormy sea and coming out alive.

If they can just get the boat almost to the bottom, and then give it a good shove, it should land just beyond where the waves are breaking. Anne knows there’s a good chance it’ll get cut to pieces on the cliff face, but at least they’re taking the chance with a dead man and not with themselves.

Eventually they reach a ledge.

‘This is as far as we can go,’ says Paul.

The waves are breaking only a few metres below them, licking up the cliff face.

‘So what do we do?’ says Bryn.

‘We have to throw it just after a wave has broken,’ says Paul, raising his voice over the wind and the spray. ‘Aim for the calm bit.’ He points at a patch of navy blue beyond all the froth and gush of the waves. ‘Hopefully the pull-back effect will take the boat clear of the island. The tide is going out in theory, so . . .’

‘How do you know the tide’s going out?’ shouts Anne, pushing wet bits of hair out of her eyes.

‘The charts,’ Paul shouts back.

So he could read them.

‘OK,’ he shouts. ‘Everyone ready?’

‘Yeah,’ shouts Bryn.

‘Yes,’ calls Jamie.

‘Yeah,’ says Anne, her fingers slipping slightly from the ropes on the boat.

‘On three,’ shouts Paul. ‘One, two . . . three.’

On
one
and
two
they swing the boat. On
three
, they let it go.

At first it seems as if the boat will be destroyed; it instantly catches an incoming wave and just misses some jagged-looking rocks. Almost vertical, the little boat bounces on the sea like a stray beach ball. But gradually it seems to move away from the island, rising and falling dangerously as it goes. Anne and the others stand there for about ten minutes until it’s safely on its way.

‘We did it,’ laughs Jamie.

‘Cool,’ says Anne.

‘Goodbye, Psycho,’ says Paul.

‘Yeah, bye,’ calls Bryn, waving to the yellow shape in the mist.

‘Better get back,’ says Anne.

They turn to walk back up to the house.

At the top, the house suddenly looks warm and inviting; it’s so incredibly wet outside. As they walk towards it, the rain suddenly turns to a drizzle and then stops. The sun comes out. Feeling like a little girl, Anne instantly turns to see if there’s a rainbow. And there’s Jamie, standing on the cliff-edge, screwing up a piece of blue paper and throwing it into the sea.

Douglas Coupland

Philip Pullman

The Times

ISBN 978 1 84767 070 0

eBook 978 1 84767 368 8

The solution, she is sure, will involve the code-breaking skills she learned from her grandparents and the key she’s been wearing round her neck since she was ten.

‘This book might just change your life’
Independent on Sunday

‘An anticorporate fable with enough code-breaking tips, puzzles and graphs, charts, postscripts and appendixes to satisfy Lewis Carroll’
New York Times