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that we were on our way to City Island to go to school and get educated and ‘have a future’ as Peggy called it.
    But wouldn’t we have had a future anyhow? I wondered. You didn’t need to go to City Island to have a future. You could get one of those no matter where you went.
    Soon old Ben was nothing but a shadow and Peggy’s island was a distant stone. All there was around us was the blue of the sky and the specks that were faraway islands. There wasn’t a cloud anywhere, not one, it was just blue, blue, burning blue – so blue it made your eyes ache and you longed for another colour, only there wasn’t one, except the flash of a bright green sky-fish flying by, or the fluttering of an orange sky-clown, or the flabby white shape of a sail-fish, seeming to wander off in all directions at once.
    â€˜Martin!’ Peggy shouted at me. She sounded annoyed.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜You’re the lookout, remember.’
    â€˜Huh?’
    â€˜Lookout. You’re supposed to be looking out. You don’t look like you’re looking out to me. You look like you’re just looking.’
    â€˜I was looking.’
    â€˜Yeah, well, you’re supposed to be looking out!’
    â€˜Yes, dumb-head –’ (That was Gemma butting in. Peggy never called you names or worked up to insults or was ever really rude to you. You need a sister to do all that.) ‘You’re supposed to be looking out on your side and I’m looking out on mine.’
    â€˜Well, I was looking out,’ I said. Which was a lie, but I don’t mind telling the occasional one. ‘And even if I wasn’t, there doesn’t seem much to look out for.’
    Peggy gave me one of her older-and-wiser looks.
    â€˜There never does until you see it,’ she said.
    â€˜Well, what am I supposed to notice? What am I supposed to bring to anyone’s attention?’
    â€˜Anything suspicious, anything dangerous, anything that looks like trouble.’
    â€˜There’s her,’ I said, pointing at Gemma. ‘She looks like all of those. Especially the trouble.’
    â€˜Get lost, Martin.’
    â€˜Here? How? There’s nowhere to get lost to.’
    â€˜Then try falling over the side –’
    â€˜OK, that’s enough, you two. Just keep an eye out, Martin, all right? These are dangerous skies.’
    â€˜They look safe enough to me.’
    â€˜That’s what’s dangerous about them.’
    â€˜If you say so.’
    â€˜I do. So keep them peeled.’
    So peeled is how I kept them. At least I did until they started closing. I saw nothing too interesting either, except a sky-shark, chasing its prey, and I thought to myself: Isn’t that always the way of it, one thing wanting to eat another? And I’ve also noticed that the thing doing the eating is usually bigger than the thing being eaten. Not always, but most of the time. Unless it’s bugs or sky-fleas, of course. But parasites eat you without necessarily killing you, whereas predators do the whole job in one.
    And then, I guess, I just stopped peeling them and I maybe dozed off. When I opened up the eye hatches again, the sky was just the same bright blue, as blue as all monotony. Peggy’s island had gone from view and old Ben waving his trousers was a snapshot in an album somewhere. I did wonder if I would ever see any of them again – Ben, the island, or the trousers.
    But then I saw something else, looming up and looming large, and it was a little too late to avoid it.
    â€˜Land ho!’ I shouted.
    Peggy was down below. The boat was on autopilot. Gemma was trailing a fishing line over the rail at the back.
    Peggy came up on deck.
    â€˜Land ho where?’
    â€˜Right there, Peg.’
    I pointed to where we were heading. If I’d been keeping them alert and peeled like I was supposed to, we might have had time to take a little evasive action. But it was too late now. We