Noah's Gold by Frank Cottrell-Boyce

Author:Frank Cottrell-Boyce
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

PS I really want you to come and rescue us, please.

SUNDAY

SUNDAY BRUNCH MENU

Catch of the Day

Garlic-Smoked Teeny Tiny Fish

Letter 1

To: Mr Moriarty

35 Glenarm Terrace, Limavady

Dear Dad,

I’m thinking about all the times you asked me to go fishing with you and I said no. Now I wish I’d said yes.

This is what I know about fishing:

• You put a bait on a hook

• You put the hook in the water

• The fish eats the bait

• The hook catches the fish

• You eat the fish

It turns out this is just a theory.

When the first touch of daylight slipped in through the hole in the roof, I spotted a big fishing rod propped up in the corner.

So I thought, how hard can it be to catch fish?

I’ll tell you exactly how hard:

hard

hard

hard

hard

hard.

The only bait I could see was one leftover potato in the bottom of the pan. I did think about eating the potato myself.

It turns out that would have been a better idea.

I looked into the water from the end of the jetty. There were streaks of sunlight under the surface like the shreds of orange peel in marmalade. Tasty-looking brown fish nosed right up to the potato, then turned around and swam away.

I don’t know what the scientific name for these little brown fish is, but I decided to call them ‘ungrateful fish’.

I wondered if the fish further out would be less ungrateful.

I stepped off the jetty on to the first rock. Hopped from there on to the second, just like Ryland had done. I got quite a long way out by rock-hopping.

The water looked colder and darker and deep.

But there was something there.

A big white wobbly square like a floating tablecloth or an underwater ghost. It got smaller, then bigger, which I realized meant it was dipping down into the depths, then rising up.

It was a big fish, or – as I liked to think of it – a big breakfast.

That is a good swap for one potato, I thought.

I dropped the line into the water just above its head, trying to find the fish’s mouth. Then the whole shape vanished. Then everything went black.

One minute I was standing on a rock. The next I was being dragged through the waves and out to sea.

The big white tablecloth was not a big white fish.

The big white tablecloth was just one part of an absolutely colossal fish.

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