Page 30 of A Secret Cornish Wish
‘I dunno, I thought I just saw a really big fish flip over in the sea. Well, I only saw its tail, but it was massive!’
‘Me and Frankie have seen that.’ Rob pulls himself up to look. ‘Like a really big goldfish tail, only more colourful?’
Eddie nods. ‘Yeah, exactly like that. It’s not the alcohol, then? I thought for a moment I might be seeing things.’
‘You’ve only had two glasses of cider!’ Mandy says mockingly. ‘You’ve hardly been downing shots.’
We all watch the waves for a bit, but we see nothing else unusual.
So we settle back down on the rugs. This time Rob manages to move closer to me, so he now has his arm around my shoulders as we lie back and look up at the pink-and-peach-coloured clouds moving across the tangerine sky.
‘What do you all want to do when you leave school?’ he asks. ‘I mean, I know we have another year yet, but do you know?’
‘Make lots of money!’ Mandy pipes up first.
‘How?’ Rob asks.
‘Dunno, but that’s what I want to be – successful and rich.’
‘I want to make a difference,’ Suzy says. ‘Probably environmentally in some way.’
‘Ah, Suz, now you’re making me look bad!’ Mandy grins. ‘Always the noble reply.’
‘It’s the truth. I do want to make a difference. This earth won’t last for ever, you know. Not if we keep treating it like we currently do. Take your empty bottles of cider there and your plastic cups. When we leave the beach, we’ll just throw them in the bin – and we’re good for even doing that. At least we clear our litter away – too many people just leave it.’
‘What else can we do other than throw it in the bin?’ Mandy asks.
‘Recycle it,’ Suzy says. ‘So it can be made into something else. But it’s not that easy here when there’s no facilities for collecting recyclable items. We have no choice but to bin them. But if we keep throwing all our rubbish in landfill, eventually it’s going to give off toxic gases that will affect not only the ozone layer, but eventually our environment too, and in the long term cause global warming.’
‘Is global warming like the Ready Brek advert?’ Eddie asks, grinning. ‘So in the future we’ll all have a warm glow around us!’
‘Laugh if you want, Eddie,’ Suzy says, not seeing the funny side. ‘But it won’t be far from that. The whole earth will heat up, and eventually if we don’t do anything it might explode.’
‘Bit dramatic, even for you, Suz.’ Eddie raises his eyebrows at the rest of us.
‘It’s not dramatic, Eddie, it’s the truth. And the sooner more people realise it, the more likely things will change.’ Suzy sighs and folds her arms determinedly across her chest. ‘Burying your head in the sand and making jokes is what the ignorant do, not the informed.’
Eddie glares at Suzy and there’s an awkward silence.
‘It sounds like you know exactly what you want to do, Suzy,’ Rob says in an attempt to defuse the situation. ‘It’s clearly a cause that’s important to you.’
Suzy nods.
‘So what about you, Eddie?’ Rob asks. ‘What do you want to do? Something theatrical, I bet.’
‘However did you guess, darling?’ Eddie says dramatically, forgetting his annoyance with Suzy for the moment. ‘The whole world is a stage – and I want to be on it in some form or another!’
‘I can’t imagine you won’t be.’ I smile at him. ‘You were born to be a performer! Unlike the rest of us who need a little persuasion.’
‘What about you, Claire?’ Rob asks. ‘What do you want in life?’
‘Oh, I just want to be happy,’ Claire says contentedly, completely comfortable with her answer. ‘I don’t want to be rich or famous or anything like that. I just want to be happy.’
We all look at Claire and smile. As she so often does, in her own quiet way she’s hit the nail on the head. ‘Well said, Claire. I guess that’s all any of us want really, to be happy in life. What about you, Rob?’ I ask, turning to him. ‘You asked the question – what do you want to do?’
‘Oh, I dunno, really. Mine’s a bit like Claire’s. I want to be happy, I want to have a job that I enjoy and I want to have a relationship like my parents have – one that lasts a lifetime. I see them together and I think that’s what I want to have when I’m their age.’
‘Man, can you get any cuter?’ Mandy looks at me. ‘Frankie, you’ve fallen on your feet with this one!’
