The Year of the Ladybird by Graham Joyce

then?’ I said. I was trying to sound distant and casual.
    ‘What?’
    I jerked a thumb at the new cleaner.
    ‘Chance they’ll be fired,’ Tony said.
    I was crestfallen. ‘Really?’
    ‘Yes, really,’ he said dryly. ‘Turns out it’s against camp rules to disconnect the windpipe of your bill-topping Italian Tenor. Who’d have thought it? What’s
the world coming to?’ He yawned; a little theatrically, I thought. Then his eyes fell on my room-mate behind me. ‘Nobby, you good-for-nothing Mancunian bastard.’
    ‘Charming, fucking charming,’ said Nobby, ‘you get one dose of gastroenteritis for a couple of days, one miserly virus and you stay off work to protect your mates from
contagion and what abuse do you get? What abuse do you get? I’m glad you asked me that. I’ll tell you what abuse you get . . .’
    But I wasn’t listening. I sat down. I was too busy thinking about whether something precious had been torn away from me or whether I’d had a lucky escape. I know that if Terri had
asked me to walk over a cliff with her I would have followed, just for the chance of a kiss on the way down.
    Nikki, in crisply laundered whites, crashed in the seat next to me. ‘Why the long face?’ She lifted her leg so that her exquisite right ankle balanced on her tantalising left knee.
Her pleated white skirt fell away to expose her tanned thighs.
    I realised she was talking to me. ‘Can’t sleep. Since I’ve been here.’
    ‘You’re not drinking enough, college boy. Or too much.’
    ‘I don’t like getting drunk. I’m a mean drunk.’
    She looked at me sceptically and was about to speak when Tony jumped out of his seat and clapped his hands loudly.
    ‘Right then, if I can interrupt you love birds,’ – he was looking at me and Nikki – ‘let me point out we have a big day ahead of us. Before that, please, a big
round of applause for Nobby who decided to come to work today.’
    Ironic applause followed. I found myself joining in.
    ‘Fucking charming, that!’ Nobby said. He started to say a lot more but Tony waved him into silence.
    ‘Girls, whist-drive this morning and round-the-clock. Sammy, you do the Glamorous Grandmother and don’t let those old birds grab your wig this week. Nobby, supervise the Crown Bowls
if you please.’
    ‘Fuckin ’ell,’ Nobby croaked, but to himself.
    ‘Nikki, show David the cheeky on the Junior Tarzan and the Bathing Belle around the pool. This afternoon, everyone in here with me for the prize giving and farewell. That means
all of
you
and that means
you
as well, Nobby. Right, out you go, and smile like it’s already home-time.’
    By ten o’clock we had the open-air swimming pool arena set up, with the PA crackling and buzzing. It was already sweltering. We broke the rules and took off our heavy blazers and worked
instead in our whites. Let them fire us, Nikki said, drawing columns on a sheet of paper attached to her clipboard. Then she looked up, put her pen behind her ear and reached out to hook something
off my shirt. It was a ladybird. She blew it off her finger.
    ‘And another,’ she said finding a second on my collar. ‘They’re all over you.’
    The ladybirds darting through the sultry morning air were well outnumbered by the Junior Tarzans. The sunshine seemed to bring them out. The Tarzans, that is. About seventy or eighty skinny kids
and a dozen fat ones, all aged between seven and eleven, sporting swimwear and lined up around the edge of the pool. It was my job to employ the PA system to rustle up a couple of impartial judges,
over which Nikki would preside. I was told to whittle the eighty kids down to a more manageable dozen. I had to ‘interview’ each kid in turn and keep it interesting. I failed. The only
thing I could think of doing was to get each lad to say his name into the microphone and to offer a semblance of a Tarzan-like jungle cry. After the discriminating judges had got the number down to
a dozen contenders, we started