The Water That May Come

CHAPTER TWO | April 2032

Gavin 

No takers at the car boot sale today. Mind you, Gavin probably looks dodgy with only a top-of-the-range camera to sell and not even a car boot to display it. Plus, by the time he's legged it up from Walmer beach, the last few stragglers are plopping their old tat into boxes, their trestle tables folded and leaning against car bonnets.

She has taken quite a fall, the owner of the camera, but she has definitely got to her feet. He waits until she pushes herself up from the pebbles, one hand clutching her forehead. Funny, when he was a kid, he'd fallen over in that exact spot. Backwards. Bruised his tailbone something nasty on those large pebbles. Apart from that, he can only remember feeling surprise, rather than pain.

Still, pinching her camera wasn't the nicest thing to do.

She might have reported it stolen by now. If Gavin can't get rid of it sharpish, he'll have to take it home.

Shame. Apart from saving for The Last Match, he had his eye on an enormous turkey, down to £9.99 at Iceland. Cooked and hugged tight by goose-fat potatoes, honey glazed parsnips and a bowl full of marrowfat peas. Not forgetting the gravy from the giblets, shredded onions curling in its depths. The gravy dish would go around the table. Firstly, to Ryan, then Big Carla, then the boys, then Little Carla, then Grandad would have refused it because onions repeated on him. He would have passed it on to Mum as she told Little Carla to wait for everyone else to be served before diving in. Then Gavin. And he would have passed it back to Grandad who would say: 'Go on, then. Ta.' But these days, of course, Gavin would put the dish back on the table and try not to look at Grandad's empty chair.

'How much do you want for it?' a teenage boy says to him.  Seventeen years old, maybe? Short, neat haircut.  

'Seventy-five,' says Gavin.  

The boy kicks at the grass as he thinks about this. 'Would you take thirty?' 

Gavin laughs. But thirty would certainly buy the turkey, no problem. And he'd have change for a Chocolate Gateau and some Aunt Bessie's Yorkshires. He could maybe pocket a couple of quid for The Last Match.   

'Tell you what, come back at the end; if I haven't sold it, you can have it for thirty.' 

The boy smirks. 'It is the end.' 

'Not quite. Give ten minutes or so.' 

'Alright,' says the boy. 'Thanks.' 

Thirty is a bit of a steal but never mind. Before he hands it over, he wants to make sure it works properly. He stands leaning up against a tractor tyre as the on-button tune tinkles. An image of a woman's mustard eye appears at the screen, a string of hair against her cheek-hollow. He clicks his tongue. Not easy. Not easy to do a selfie with these bulky things. Still, it looks kind of artsy, sort of, on purpose. His hand slips into his pocket to a twin pack of pink wafers. He picks at the stiff waves of cling-film just as a brown labrador hovers into his peripheral. Gavin likes drawing dogs; he likes their em-shaped brows. Still, this dog isn't there to be drawn. 'Not for you, mate,' he says, still unwrapping the wafers. 'Pink colouring might send you doo-dah.' 

The dog sits, head on one side, eyes mental. 

Gavin breaks one in half and sits on the grass. 'At least it's not chocolate,' he says, and feeds it into the dog's mouth. 'That's bad for dogs. Chocolate's bad for dogs,' he says, chewing on the other half. A woman's voice makes them both look up.  

'Yes. That's mine, Officer. That's my eye on the screen, see?' says the woman, the owner of the mustard eye and the camera. Close up, Gavin can see a gaping slit above her right eyebrow.

The dog backs away, still licking its back teeth. 

'Gavin, you've been told.' 

Wayne. Officer Wayne. 

Gavin scrunchs the wrapping around the remaining wafer and stands up. 

'Did you plan to sell it?' says Wayne.  

Those bulbous-toed boots are always stood at ease, thinks Gavin. 'Yes,' he says. 'I waited, you know,' he says to the woman. 'I did wait to see if you got up, Miss.'

She hugs herself as if she were cold. 'Gillian,' she says.  

'Gillian,' Gavin repeats. 'And you seemed alright - when you did get up - so I left,' says Gavin, inching up the tractor wheel. 'I didn't know you'd cut your head; I'd never've.'

'Alright, Gavin,' says Officer Wayne. 'We're going to have to take you in.' 

Gavin looks down at the camera still hanging against his belly. He lifts the strap over his head and hands it back to the woman. 'I was going to buy a turkey for my mum.' 

She reaches out and takes the camera from him. 

'I did wait,' says Gavin. 

'It's alright,' says Gillian. 'Don't worry.' 

'Is he yours?' says Wayne, taking notes, chin jutting towards the dog. 

'No,' says Gavin, patting his pocket. 'He just wanted a biscuit.' 

Gillian smiles; is that a smile? Have her folded arms loosened a little? He should have helped when she'd slipped on the rocks, but in that moment, there was only Mum and the turkey on his mind. And fifty quid for his pocket. Maybe fifty-five. But his mum would have thrown it all in the sea to run over and make sure Gillian was alright. 

'Come on then,' says Wayne. 

'Spare any change?' says a man by the steps of the police station. He has a labrador, same colour as the one by the tractor wheel.

'Think I've got fifty pence,' says Gavin, looking at Wayne. 

Wayne stalls and sighs. 'Is it in your pocket?' 

'Yeah.' 

'Go on, then,' he says. 'I'm not supposed to let you do this.'  

Gavin digs in his pocket, produces fifty pence and slips it onto the man's palm. 

'What are you like?' says Wayne. 

Shrug. 

'Yet you wouldn't help that lady when she fell over,' he adds. 

'I was about to,' says Gavin. 

'But you didn't. You nicked her camera.' 

The man closes his fingers around the coin and bumps Gavin's fist with his own. Gavin thinks he sees Officer Wayne smile but maybe that is just the shape of his mouth. 

'We'd better go in,' he says.

'Yeah, okay. Have you still got that fish tank on the front desk?' 

Officer Wayne rolls his eyes. 

A lady officer takes Gavin to a cell where he sits on the bunk and counts the bricks in the opposite wall. He did this last time too. After a few hours, eyes appear at the slot in the cell door.

'She's not pressing charges,' says Officer Wayne.

And the door clicks open.

The lady officer gives him his things back and tells him he can go. Gavin asks if he can draw the fish tank. Officer Wayne would have let him, but the lady officer says 'no'. He says he'll only be five minutes. She says, 'What do you want to draw the fish tank for?' He says he's got a craft fair coming up. She looks over at another policeman who blinks and nods at her. 'Alright.' Gavin stands at reception and sketches, tongue between his teeth. The lady officer thinks he can't see, but she keeps looking at him with her eyelids right back and the big white bits of her eyes gleaming like hardboiled eggs - how could he not see that? Afterwards, he might ask to draw her and her hard-egg eyes. Another policewoman turns up with a man in handcuffs. His t-shirt reads: ONLY ANIMALS FUCK IN FRONT OF STRANGERS. Gavin stared. The man catches him staring and says, 'Are you gonna do your missus in front of The Jury? Or die on this island?' The policewoman tells him to shut up. Gavin goes back to his drawing. He doesn't have a missus, thankfully. Egg-eyes says, 'This is ridiculous,' to him, or to her male colleague, he isn't sure. 'Do we always let him do this?'

The other policeman shrugs.  

'I've finished,' says Gavin, dropping a loud dot at the edge of his drawing. 'But I could only draw two fish.' He turns his paper around. 'Doesn't matter because they're all pretty much the same.'  

She says, 'Good, off you go then.'  

'Aren't you gonna look at it?'

'Fuck me, it's really fucking good,'...