Read Online The Last Kings of Sark by Rosa Rankin-Gee - Free Book Online Page B

here.
    â€˜Serious?’ Sofi said. ‘She took that rope?’
    â€˜Yeah. We used to come and pretend this flint bit was a tile on a giant’s roof. That we were on top of everything.’
    We lay on our bellies, our tops pulled up so the bottoms of our backs were in the sun. Sofi got her chocolate orange out of my bag, battered now, and cracked it open on our rock. She ate it two pieces at a time, sucking first and then scraping the pieces back out of her mouth against her teeth. Her bottom lip was brown, and she coloured in the top, like lipstick, with a stubby segment of chocolate orange. Pip took his top off, shoulders pale and broad as a canvas, collarbone like an anchor. He sat cross-legged. He’d taken his notebook out of his back pocket and was writing in it, pretending not to listen to our conversation.
    â€˜Would you rather your hand be stuck – for the rest of your life – in an unbreakable jam jar…’ (this was Sofi, every other word italicized) ‘… or that everything you ever eat again for the rest of your life taste of tuna?’
    â€˜Tuna,’ I said.
    â€˜So quick to answer! It’s not with mayonnaise, you know. It’s plain, tinned, tuna.’
    â€˜Tuna.’
    â€˜It’s in brine. ’
    â€˜Not being jam-jar-hand. It would wither.’
    â€˜I know, but tuna … fuck. ’ She looked out to sea, shaking her head.
    Sofi took these questions so seriously. We’d wake up in the morning and the first thing she’d say to me was that she’d changed her mind. She’d decided it would be better if her dad walked in on her and her dog, rather than vice versa. I’d be half asleep, and it would take a while to work out what she was talking about.
    â€˜Fine,’ she said now. ‘The tuna. Fine. Maybe that’s better. But, would you rather – sleep with Armin – or the Ross man who has all the tractors?’
    â€˜No more, Sofi, no more.’ Though there were always more. I suppose they were ways of asking the questions you wanted the answers to. I asked her if she’d ever been in love, and she said no.
    â€˜I want to go to Paris,’ she said then, as if it was the logical step in a conversation about love. ‘Have you been? I so want to go.’
    I’d been there on a school exchange. We’d partnered with a convent but one of the nuns died while we were there and we didn’t get to go to Disneyland.
    â€˜It’s OK,’ I said. ‘Bit overrated.’
    â€˜Not for me. I’ve seen films, it’s perfect for me. La Haine. All of that.’
    â€˜Sofi,’ Pip chimed in, looking up from his notebook, his shoulders red despite the suncream, ‘ La Haine is about Algerian immigrants in tower blocks. We watched it for GCSE. It’s about murder.’
    â€˜That’s what I mean. I like it whatever. Whatever. Look.’ She was holding a segment of chocolate orange between her fingers, using it firmly, like a teacher, as if it made her argument stronger. ‘I am going to Paris and none of you bastards can stop me.’
    â€˜No one’s trying to,’ I said. ‘You’re having a fight with yourself. If you go, I’ll come and meet you under the Eiffel Tower one day.’
    â€˜Really?’ she said. She softened. She realized the piece of chocolate orange was softening too, and that it was the last one, and she offered it to me.
    I shook my head about the chocolate. But about Paris: ‘Really,’ I said. She put the top of her forehead against my arm, and stroked me with it, like a cat, clumsily. Her head was so hot, you could almost feel the activity going on inside it. ‘I’ll be there, jam jar on hand, eating tuna, whatever.’
    â€˜I might be there too,’ suddenly, from Pip. ‘I’ve got family there. Mum’s side.’
    We had never heard him say the word mum before. It felt too easy a word for