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you?’
    â€˜Rachel’s going to be the Olympic champion of the world. She’s my sister.’
    Rachel runs some more laps while Spencer explains that his family moves around a lot, and Hazel says same here. Her father has just been voted Salesperson of the Year ‘93, whereas Spencer’s Dad, in his job as a warehouseman, often stacks boxes full of furniture belonging to famous people.
    Like who?
    Like John Major.
    They both laugh out loud.
    Hazel’s parents are married all the time, she says, even though her Mum thinks her Dad is having an affair.
    â€˜Is he?’
    â€˜Of course not,’ Hazel says, ‘he’s married.’
    Spencer says he isn’t sure about his parents, because his Dad sometimes worries he was swapped in the hospital at birth, so maybe his real parents aren’t married, no.
    â€˜River Phoenix,’ Hazel says.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜My favourite famous person.’
    'The Queen,’ Spencer says, which is funny enough to set them both off again. Rachel comes back. She asks for her time but Spencer’s forgotten to set the watch so he makes something up. It’s another world record.
    â€˜Spencer’s my coach,’ Rachel says. ‘We’re going all the way to the top.’
    And because Hazel sees this as a challenge, she says:
    â€˜My Dad writes one hundred Christmas cards every year.’
    Spencer tries to think of something better, but he can’t, so he asks Hazel what she has in her bag just as Olive appears at the top of the slope, lies down on her front, carries on reading.
    â€˜My sister,’ Hazel says. ‘Her name’s Olive. She reads a lot.’
    Rachel lies on her back and does some bicycle kicks while Hazel empties her bag onto the sand. It contains a towel, three oranges, a bag of chopped walnuts, a bottle of vitamin supplements, a phonecard, a spare sweater,
A Fresh Wind in the Willows
, a pair of red-and-white knitted gloves (for cold November hands), and a white Conchita Martinez tennis skirt.
    Spencer picks up the phonecard. Instead of being the normal green colour it has a fuzzy black and white photograph of a pair of eyes staring up from it, and these eyes clearly belong to Charlie Chaplin.
    Hazel stands up and brashes sand off her legs. She unwraps the towel from her waist, shakes it out and starts to dry the ends of her hair.
    'It means we can ring up if anything goes wrong,’ she says.
    â€˜What could go wrong?’
    Hazel rolls her eyes and Rachel copies her, still upside down, her legs pointing straight at the sky.
    â€˜Something unexpected and very nasty,’ Hazel says.
    â€˜Like what?’
    â€˜I don’t know, it’s unexpected.’
    â€˜Why not just money?’ Spencer asks.
    â€˜Because then we could be robbed,’ Hazel tells him. ‘Or mugged.’
    â€˜Or raped,’ Olive adds, without looking up from her book.
    â€˜Murdered,’ Hazel says. ‘So anyway, Mum decided we better have a phonecard. Last to touch the sea’s a walrus.’
    And Hazel is already sliding down the sand dune, waving her towel, and Rachel is right behind her followed by Spencer, desperately clicking his stop-watch. Rachel and Hazel reach the sea in a dead-heat. ‘Spencer takes bronze,’ Rachel says, and then Hazel starts slapping water at him, and Rachel tackles him into the shallows.
    Later, they take turns to dry themselves with Hazel’s towel. Spencer pinches Hazel, though not hard, and then punches her arm, but only playfully.
    â€˜Pinch and a punch,’ he says, ‘first day of the month,’ and lies down beside her, looking up at the sky, the clouds moving, the sky.
    Hazel pinches him back, and then kicks him. ‘A pinch and a kick for being so thick. What’s better,’ she asks, ‘rich or famous?’
    â€˜Famous,’ Spencer says.
    â€˜Wrong.’

    11/1/93 M ONDAY 07:48
    â€˜Not today,’ Spencer said. ‘Any