It was the sort of thing that Boatman’s mother Sarah said when she’d had quite a bit to drink. There was a lot of Sarah in Boatman.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘When?’
‘One day. In the future. What are you going to do?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know.’
That always seemed to be the problem. Boatman had plans, even at eleven.
I couldn’t tell her that one day perhaps Josh Boatman might marry me and we’d build a house on the mainland. I hadn’t thought beyond that and it didn’t quite compare with Rio and the Samba. The girls in our class were now talking about what boys they liked. I didn’t like any of the boys in our class. Boatman liked one of the boys at the high school, so I didn’t think it was so crazy that I liked her brother.
We called the room the Hovel. I can’t remember why. A week af
