Page 66 of One Summer

Sent to him? Why does he look so shifty as he tells me this?

‘Sent to you? As a present?’

‘Not exactly. I think I’m going to give it to my nan. She’s been hinting for years about wanting one for getting around the island.’

‘Um, I think you might have missed your window for that gift.’

‘Why?’

‘Sixty-year-old women don’t ride hoverboards.’

‘If you say so.’

Ted has been sniffing a fascinating scent trail and rolling on his back in some unspecified filth, but when he spots who I’m talking to, he runs up to him so happily and I see a pang of guilt cross the man’s face.

‘About me looking after Ted,’ he says, honing straight in on the awkwardness. ‘I’m sorry I can’t, but I actually have stuff to do.’

‘And I don’t?’ I say. ‘I have eighty-seven snakes in my care.’

He shrugs. ‘Even so.’

I feel myself flush with annoyance.

‘I’m here to work on my own thing, as well. I did a jewellery-making course in London and I’m hoping to build up some stock while I’m here. Maybe do some of the summer craft fairs. I’m not just about snakes, okay?’

He’s turned cold again. The hairs on his arm are up. He takes a hoodie from his backpack, and I’m pleased to see it doesn’t have a slogan on the front.

‘Okay,’ he says to me, once he’s all hoodied up. ‘You have nothing to prove to me.’

‘I know I don’t.’

I realise he’s probably feeling awkward about refusing to help with Ted, and doesn’t know how to handle it, but he manages to get under my skin anyway.

‘I don’t need to know your business,’ he adds.

‘Fine,’ I say. ‘That’s the way I’d prefer to keep it.’

He does an irritating little smile and turns away from me to look at a seal begging for fish in the harbour, and I see a slogan on the back of the hoodie, because of course there’s one.

MY MAMA DON’T LIKE YOU AND SHE LIKES EVERYONE.

‘That’s a pretty passive-aggressive jacket you’re wearing,’ I say, glaring at him.

‘What?’ he says looking down at the front in that really annoying way he always does. ‘There’s nothing on it.’

‘There is on the back.’

He waves my objection away. ‘Leave my clothes alone and they’ll leave you alone.’

‘Except they’re shouting hostile messages at me in capital letters.’

‘It was a present.’

‘Whoever gave it to you sounds hilarious,’ I say.

‘Not really. My ex.’

‘Halloo! Is that my hoverboard?’

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