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any good?’
    Tim’s smile slipped a little. ‘Jet-skiing?’ He shook his head. ‘No. Never tried.’
    Both Gully and Scott looked as surprised as their attitudes would allow.
    And Tim took the plunge. ‘Well, you know, it’s meant to be dangerous.’
    He let his words hang there; hoping one of them would jump in and say, ‘Yeah, we know all about
that,’
and save him the embarrassment. Unfortunately they simply stared at him.
    So with a shrug he said, ‘What with the monster and everything . . .’
    Gully’s chewing slowly came to a halt. ‘What?’
    Tim felt like he was wading through deep water. ‘Hasn’t anybody told you?’ He tried to look shocked. ‘It’s the local legend, you see. The Mourn. It’s called the Mourn.’ He was nodding his head like it was on a quick spring. ‘Yeah. It lives in the lake. It eats people . . .’ He coughed, shuffled his feet. ‘Sometimes.’
    Gully’s mouth hung open wide enough for Tim to be able to see the mush of bacon and beans in there. He had a real urge to laugh and shout, ‘Nah! Just kidding!’ But couldn’t. He realized the elderly American couple were listening in, and guessed Mr Spicer might well be too. He said quietly, ‘It’s the local legend.’
    Scott narrowed his eyes dubiously. ‘You’ve got a monster? In the lake?’
    Tim nodded. ‘Yeah. It’s called the Mourn. It—’
    â€˜Like the Loch Ness Monster or something?’
    â€˜Erm . . . Not really.’
    â€˜Like a leftover dinosaur or something?’
    â€˜No. Not really,’ Tim repeated.
    Gully swallowed hard. ‘This is
so
cool!’ He looked to Scott for confirmation of just how cool it was.
    â€˜I’ve never heard of it,’ Scott said. His narrowed eyes watched Tim carefully.
    â€˜It’s just local,’ Tim tried to explain. ‘But, you know . . . I thought you’d better know before you go out on the lake.’ He said, ‘Be careful,’ and felt stupid the second the words were out of his mouth.
    Gully was ploughing through his breakfast even quicker now, desperate to get it down him. ‘I want to go out there. Water-skiing with a big, massive monster snapping at my arse. Fantastic! You ever seen
Jaws
?’
    Scott laughed at him before asking Tim: ‘So who’s it eaten, then?’
    â€˜Some kids; years ago.’
    â€˜When? I didn’t see anything on the news.’
    â€˜No, no, you wouldn’t have. It was three hundred years ago.’ He was being forced into saying far more than he’d planned to. He wanted to be back in the kitchen where they could take the piss without his knowing or seeing them do it. ‘Well, just over. 1699.’ But he couldn’t shut himself up now. ‘There were five of them and it—’
    â€˜Come on,’ Gully was telling Scott. ‘We’ve got to get out there.’
    Scott wasn’t moving, however. ‘1699? So it’s just a legend, then?’
    Thinking,
How many times do you need telling?
he said, ‘Yeah.’
    Sylvie turned round in her seat to face them. ‘It’s a real interesting story,’ she said to Scott. ‘There’s a little piece about it in my guidebook. I’ll let you read it if you like.’
    Her husband leaned forward and waved his fork at them. ‘It’s barely more than a paragraph – blink and you’d missit. But we’ve come out of our way because she liked the story so much.’
    â€˜But it’s so interesting, Mike.’
    Mike murmured that he guessed it was.
    Scott raised an eyebrow. ‘Sounds like I missed the best part of the lecture when I was here.’
    â€˜I want to look for it,’ Gully said. ‘I was up at Loch Ness as a kid once and had a
riot.’
He was grinning hugely. ‘I made my sister cack her pants when I pushed her