Safe Harbour by Marita Conlon-Mckenna Page A

ignoring her.
    ‘Hugh!’
    ‘I don’t want to go!’ he shouted at her.
    ‘Hugh! ‘
    ‘You go! I’ll stay here with Donal,’ he promised.
    ‘Oh, all right then!’ she agreed reluctantly. ‘I won’t be long.’
    Sophie jumped off the wall, leaving the boys to their game. She walked up past the hotel entrance to Mrs Murphy’s shop. The shopkeeper, with her blond curly-haired baby resting on her hip, waved to Sophie. Sophie waved back, then ran on past the church and finally entered the stuffy stillness of the post office.
    There was a queue ahead of her and she tapped her foot impatiently, making the man in front glare at her.
    Her three letters were ready to go across the sea, all full of good news and cheerful things – things that sometimes gave her a feeling of such tightness in her throat and chest while she wrote them that she often had to put her pen down. Her Mum must never know about the nights she lay still in her bed with hot tears scalding her eyes and cheeks. Aunt Jessie must never know how she longed for someone to laugh and chat with so she would not feel so alone, and Dad must never realise that her sleep was haunted by bad dreams of bombs and bullets and of him being wounded or dead.
    She posted the letters and ran back towards the harbour. A small crowd had gathered on the North Beach. Sophie wondered what they were doing. Was Hugh there in the middle of it all? In an instant she spotted Donal, his young face white and scared – and why had Mr Kinsella, his father, waded out into the water up to his chest? Two other fishermen were shouting and pointing at something.
    Where was Hugh? She scanned the crowd carefully, searching for him.
    A woman who had been sitting reading came up beside Sophie. ‘Apparently it’s some poor child,’ she said, ‘fell off a boat. The whole thing nearly capsized!’
    Warning bells sounded in Sophie’s head. She could hear the gushing sound of water in her ears as she began to race, tumbling and tripping over the large uneven stones.
    ‘It wasn’t my fault, Sophie!’ pleaded Donal. ‘We weretaking turns pushing each other in and out and holding the rope. I dropped the rope and Hugh got scared. I told him to sit down and stay still and I’d get him, but he was trying to climb out or something and the boat went over to one side and he slipped in.’
    ‘Oh my God! Where is he?’ Sophie rushed headlong into the water. Mr Kinsella was lifting something up – it was her brother. His head flopped against the fisherman’s chest and his arms and legs dangled limply. His eyes were closed and his lips and face were almost totally blue.
    The fisherman brushed Sophie aside and carried Hugh up onto the beach where he laid him on a coat that someone had spread out on the ground. He tilted Hugh’s head back and put his large hand across the boy’s pale neck.
    ‘Come on, lad. You’re safe. We got you out. Come on, lad.’
    Sophie crouched on the stones beside him. ‘Hugh, don’t do this. Do you hear me? Don’t do this!’ She pulled at the cold wet hand and arm.
    Hugh’s eyelashes seemed to move, something was stirring within him. A bubbling, choking kind of cough came from his throat.
    ‘Over you go, lad!’ Mr Kinsella rolled him gently to one side.
    Water burst out of Hugh’s mouth and from the pinched whiteness of his nostrils, and he splurted and gagged.
    A huge sigh of relief swelled from the crowd of people around.
    ‘The boy’s all right!’
    ‘Gave us a right scare but he’s safe now!’
    ‘Nearly drowned, you know!’
    Mr Kinsella and Sophie knelt down beside Hugh. They were both soaking wet too and already Sophie was beginning to feel cold despite the sun.
    ‘I’m sorry, Soph!’ Hugh began to cry a funny kind of cry, as if he couldn’t get his breath.
    ‘Don’t talk, Hugh lad! Save your breath!’ advised Mr Kinsella.
    Hugh’s teeth started to chatter and he began to shiver, his lips moving as if he were praying.
    A woman interrupted them.