If Tony and Olive had been going for incognito, they’d definitely have blown it. Never had more noise been made with an entrance to the beach. Even though their huts were several hundred yards along the promenade, there was every chance, if someone was squatting in Olive’s hut tonight, they’d have heard their arrival.
‘We’re never going to make super sleuths,’ Olive said, laughing some more.
Tony had dismounted the Segway, his laughter too frequent to allow him to keep his balance. ‘Look, I think we’ve scared them.’
The group of teens, who’d been huddled round an illegal campfire (they weren’t allowed on the beaches), were all gathering their things ready to leave.
To be fair, Olive reckoned a couple of adults turning up looking like they might be mall cops would put her off hanging around for a teenage-angst soiree. ‘Maybe our trespasser will put the noise down to them. Because, if not, we’re likely to have scared them off as well as those youngsters.’
Because it was dark, and the lighting wasn’t so great, it was hard to see the youths as they sloped off. However, call it familiarity, but Olive was pretty certain she recognised three of the figures.
They were heading away from them and, if it was Tony’s boys, she wasn’t about to point them out, but the moment Tony mounted the Segway again, she knew he’d spotted them too.
It was such a shame Olive wasn’t able to request a backie. Tony didn’t have to go far to reach the group, though, and Olive soon caught up. The conversation had obviously got past the ‘Dad, you’re so emmmbarasssssing’ stage and moved on to what the boys were doing there.
‘We always come here after football practice,’ Noah said, probably annoyed at his dad for showing him up in front of his mates. He might have reached eighteen, but there was still room for a parent to embarrass his child.
‘Does your mother know?’
‘Does Mum know you’re out?’ Noah said, quick to pick up on the fact that Tony was also bending the familial rules.
‘Not exactly.’
‘Not exactly?’ Noah parroted.
‘Not exactly, as in no. Perhaps we could all keep this on the down low. Your mum doesn’t need to know anything. Just as long as you lot aren’t getting yourself in trouble.’
‘Says the man Segwaying down a slope at a hundred miles an hour. Can we have a go?’ Aiden asked.
‘It’s not mine… this is Olive’s.’
Olive wasn’t keen on letting lots of people try it out. Its purpose was to get her about, and if too many people mucked around with it, it would soon get broken.
‘Can we, Olive?’
They weren’t the runaway delinquent teenagers on the beach that Olive had thought they might have been. The Salter boys were good, even if they did hang out at the beach without permission after football practice. She wasn’t sure about the other three boys with them, but she guessed they were all from the same team. They’d even been responsible enough to put the fire out when leaving the beach, but she wasn’t sure if she would trust any of them on a new piece of equipment she still needed to sort the insurance out for.
‘Have any of you been drinking?’ Olive hoped they hadn’t as she didn’t want to get the boys in trouble with their dad, but she was also wise enough to know the kind of behaviour teenagers might get up to when they were hanging out on a beach and avoiding their parents.
All six boys shook their heads to say no.
Good, that was one less thing for Tony to have to worry about.
‘Drugs?’ The word slipped out of Olive’s mouth with thoughts of what teens got up to. She really hoped not, otherwise the agreement not to tell Esme would be well and truly over.
‘Nope,’ Aiden said, with all the others agreeing.
‘Hmmm… okay, how many of you have got a driving license?’
A couple of the lads shook their heads.
‘I have,’ Aiden said.
‘Me too,’ another of the lads said.
‘No, you don’t,’ Noah said.
‘Yeah, I do.’
‘I don’t think provisional licenses count,’ Aiden said.
‘Full licenses only,’ Olive said, finally landing on a way to prevent all of them from wanting a whizz around and surely smashing it in one way or another. ‘So, Aiden can have a go, but on one condition.’
‘That I don’t tell Mum you’re getting Dad into trouble. I thought that was the condition.’ Aiden could be too smart for his own good at times.
‘The condition is that you let me and your dad hang out with you for a while on the beach.’
‘Soooo uncool,’ one of Aiden’s friends protested.
‘Hang on a second, sonny. Who’s the one with the Segway?’
‘And she’s invented the Gin Shack. She’s the coolest person you’re ever going to meet, Jack.’ Tony obviously knew the lads even if Olive didn’t. ‘So why do you want to hang out with them, Olive?’
‘We need a lookout place, don’t we? And there’s not exactly anywhere inconspicuous for us to hide ourselves unless we’re planning on pretending to be a couple of crabs hidden among the rocks. I figured, give us a couple of hoodies and we can make out like we’re one of the yoofs.’
‘What do you need a lookout for?’ Noah asked.
‘Olive thinks there’s someone squatting at her beach hut. We thought we’d try and see if we could catch anyone going in.’
‘So, will you help us out?’ Olive was hopeful that they’d join in rather than thinking they were just a couple of oldies out to cramp their style.
‘Yep, just as long as we’re all allowed to have a go on your Segway once we have our licenses.’ The boys’ negotiating skills were strong.
Olive was going to have to agree to them all having a go, but at least it might be over a few years rather than them all having a go this evening. ‘Deal.’
‘Right, let’s hide it for now,’ Aiden said.
‘I thought you wanted to have a go?’ Tony said.
‘Not after seeing you come down that slope. I’ll wait till there’s some daylight and I have a crash helmet on, thanks.’
Who’d have thought it would end up being the yoof being more sensible than their parents. It was bound to happen at some point, Olive guessed.
‘Where we staking out then?’ Noah asked.
‘We need to be further along the beach, near our row of huts.’
Down on the sands again, Olive now swamped in a hoodie, she did her best to swagger along, yoof-like. She was probably walking more like she’d had a hip replacement than she ever had. It turned out being hip meant strutting like she had a bad hip.
Still, they had to appear fairly inconspicuous and the only other way to do it was to pretend to be fishermen hoping for a late-night catch. At least this way they could huddle and chatter without drawing attention to themselves.
They’d picked a suitable spot, near to the steps up to the promenade in case they wanted to escape relatively quickly. Within five minutes, Olive cracked open her rucksack supplies.
It was unlikely a group of lads on the beach would have a thermos full of tea to share with their mates, but it could have been prep for jagerbombers as far as anyone else looking on would be able to tell.
It turned out she’d also packed enough snacks for them all to have something. It was possible she overprepared for these trips, but one could never have enough snacks as far as Olive was concerned, although she felt sorry for the lad who ended up with the pack of squashed chocolate raisins. They looked like they could have been something else appearing from Olive’s bag of tricks. When the rucksack was empty of anything else squashable, Olive used it as a cushion, the extra clothes she had inside providing a soft pad for her bottom.
‘How do you think they’re getting in your hut then?’ Noah asked.
‘There’s no forced entry. They must have a key.’ Olive bit off half her Twix finger in one go. She always ate too fast when she was nervous, and despite being round a bunch of strapping lads, she was still worried about her little beach hut being misused. She didn’t have a life partner any more, but if places could be legitimate partners for life, then her little beach hut was hers. It had been her constant companion for many years. It was reliable on a level no human ever could be. And while it would never beat actual interactions with the friends and family in her life, she had a bond with the place like it was part of her DNA.
‘Are they staying every night then?’
‘I’m not sure. All I know is I think I caught them, but they seemed to disappear. That was a few days ago. I’ve stopped going to the hut in the early morning to see if that’s what scared them off.’
‘Surely scaring them off is a good thing? Maybe they won’t head back and you’re rid of them.’
‘But then I won’t know who it was.’ It was an odd thing, but somehow knowing who it was would make Olive feel better. Not knowing had left her with a sense of unease that was making her uncomfortable and she’d never felt like that in her hut. And as the doctor had said, she wasn’t losing her marbles. She just wanted some confirmation of what was going on.
‘Someone’s coming,’ one of the other lads said.
At least one of them was doing a good job as lookout.
‘Don’t all look,’ Tony said, as they all simultaneously craned their heads round.
Olive had been clever enough to choose a spot that didn’t involve any amount of dislocating her neck to see what was happening. She was also covered by a couple of the taller boys, so hopefully no one would notice the white-haired old lady among them. Their stakeout would be ruined if the boys got reported for nanny-napping.
The person they were on about was in dark clothing and down the café end of the promenade. They didn’t have a dog with them, which at this time of night struck Olive as suspicious. However, it was possible it was someone out for a late-night walk, entirely innocently.
‘Is it just one person?’ Tony whispered. He’d not been so wise in his positioning, possibly because he’d got distracted by the pack of chocolate digestives Olive had distributed.
Olive did her best to take a peek without giving the appearance of a meerkat on lookout. Because it was further along the promenade, it was harder to work out exactly what was going on. All she could see was a chap (and she assumed it was a fella, because without wanting to be not entirely PC, the person was entirely lacking in boobage) shuffling around in his dark hoodie, just outside the café. The way he was dressed, he could well be there to burgle the place. ‘He’s doing something. I just can’t work out what.’
‘He’s getting a stepladder,’ Noah said. He had a slightly better view on the part of their circle nearest to the café.
‘Is he burgling the place?’ Tony was craning his neck now, wanting to see what was going on.
It wasn’t exactly bright enough to see the exact details. The only light was coming from lighting along the path above the cliff face. It gave the promenade a mystical glow like it was dowsed in stardust. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t know what he’s doing.’
‘He hasn’t spotted us yet. We need to move closer. Come on.’ Aiden flagged them all to follow him so the concrete wall would shield them.
All six of the lads took this as a command, like they were all in serious danger, and were going to get shot if they didn’t do as told. In this vein, they all started different variations of commando-style crawling across to the shelter of the wall. It was only Tony and Olive left looking at each other, wondering what their next move should be.
The guy-shaped person was busy putting his stepladder up and Olive didn’t want to end up caught by him. Although there was a gang of six lads that could jump him if he caused any problems. Not that she wanted to encourage the boys into yobbish behaviour. Better that she remain hidden as well.
Not that her speed would match the rest of them. Olive found her way onto all fours, and started off in the direction of the boys. There was no way she could manage to commando crawl, so a basic crawl would have to do. She’d never been so glad to be in a pair of trousers and, even better, they were dark. Had she known what she was going to get up to that day, she would have ordered in those kneepads already.
Tony drew parallel to Olive with his preferred option of low crawling, which was somewhere between the two styles. He looked rather like a turtle heading back to the ocean after laying his eggs on the shore. ‘He’s probably just the window cleaner.’
‘If he is, we’ll look like right numpties.’ It wasn’t like this was something Olive would do every day of the week. Or any day of the week for that matter.
When they reached the rest of the group, Olive soon realised the problem with their new position was that they no longer had the advantage of being able to see what was going on. Not unless one of them lifted their head above the parapet, which in essence defeated the point of them moving in the first place.
So, safe from view, none of them was any the wiser as to what was going on, but there had to be something shifty about the character lurking about two metres above them for all of them to have been worried enough to fall into silence.
Instead they all listened to the shifting movement coming from above. First there was scraping, which Olive guessed was the step ladder being moved. It was followed by a lengthy silence as if the person had stopped in their tracks, maybe to send a message or to check Facebook on their phone. Then there was movement again and Olive wasn’t able to tell if it was one or two sets of footsteps.
All she knew at this point was she really wished she’d eaten the second half of the Twix before crawling over here, because now all she had was a mash of a mess in her hand that looked, well, not great in the dark. If she was being frank, if any of the boys saw the mess she was in, they would think she’d soiled herself and used her hand to clean up. And quite frankly she was still a bit peckish, with no idea how long they’d be waiting down here.
Realising there was only one way to clean up, she set to cleaning her hand like she was a toddler, the licking-it-all-off method being the only one available.
At least it entertained her while they continued to listen, all of them beginning to get a bit restless with the position they’d put themselves in. If they spoke, they’d be heard. If they moved, they’d be seen. Even licking her fingers was a bit of a risk.
As there was more movement above them, Olive tried to work out if it had moved further along to her beach hut. She’d half-forgotten the purpose of their visit. They seemed to be doing something at the café, but that wasn’t to say they might be tampering with Olive’s original Gin Shack.
Aiden started some hand signals to all of them that Olive didn’t totally understand, but from the wild gesticulations she got that they should all be staying there while he went to go and check things out. He then started moving towards the steps, presumably so he could take a peek without being seen.
Olive hoped her beach hut wasn’t part of what was going on. She knew that was why she was here, but she’d imagined it was some homeless person just finding shelter. Instead it might be that someone was using it as a base for a criminal drug ring that only operated during certain hours. That wasn’t a particularly pleasant thought, especially as it was far too close to the truth of what had occurred at Oakley West during the summer.
Within a minute or two of reaching the steps and a new vantage point, Aiden gave up all attempts at hiding himself, shooting straight up so his tall frame would be seen by any passers-by.
‘Oi! What do you think you’re doing?’ With that Aiden shot up the steps, taking two at a time, presumably chasing whoever they’d been hiding from.
Olive gave up hiding, as did everyone else, seeing as there was absolutely no point now.
Not wanting to miss what was going on, they all followed Aiden, most of the boys starting to run to give chase.
Olive wasn’t going to be taking up running any time soon, but it was very easy to work out exactly what had been going on to cause Aiden to give their presence away.
Because, with streamers blowing in the wind, the beach café now had a giant decoupage bottom to match the one that had been hung at the Gin Shack.
And, like the Gin Shack, the letters on the sign had been changed to say something else. Olive couldn’t tell what from down on the sands, but she knew she wanted a closer look to be sure. Because whatever it was, she knew for certain it would feel like a threat. Whoever was doing this – the person they’d just been metres away from – was a manipulating coward who wanted to make their presence known without admitting who they were.
Moving in, she saw that the sign read: Café CLOSED cos it hit Rock Bottom.
Olive couldn’t work out what to make of it. If the café was definitely closed, why use it as a target? Maybe because no one would be about to take the sign off like they had.
With all of the boys playing chase, Olive wasn’t able to do much to move the sign off other than yank at a few streamers and use them to clean off her hand.
And as there was no stepladder to try and yank the rest off, there was only one thing useful she was able to do.
With her hand as clean as possible and chocolate-covered streamers in the bin, Olive found her Segway and did her very best to give them all a run for their money by attempting to catch up.
It turned out getting her go-faster stripes was going to be useful.