Daylight Saving

On the day we arrived, I thought I saved her life.

Dad drove slowly into Marwood Forest, home of Leisure World, Europe’s biggest sports holiday complex, and — in my opinion — most colossal pit of hellfire.

“We just need to get away, Daniel,” he said. “It’s only for a week.”

“A week,” I said, shaking my head.

“It’s not so long,” he said. “We need some proper time together.”

Time. It was all my family — or what was left of it — ever talked about.
In time, things’ll get easier. We just need to put some time between ourselves and what happened.
Time apart. Time together. Time away from school.

“Besides,” Dad said, smoothing his tracksuit top, “it’s somewhere we can get healthy.”

“I am healthy. There’s nothing wrong with me,” I said. I was a little sensitive about my weight.

Dad did that thing where he puts his head back and then rubs his hand down the stubble on his neck. It was like he was strangling himself. He hadn’t always done it. It was a new thing, like his obsession with growing vegetables, and crying. We pulled into the biggest car park I had ever seen. Metal and glass sparkled in the weak sunlight.

“I know there’s nothing wrong with you, kiddo,” Dad said. “It’s me.”

We got out of the car and started unloading our bags. Motor vehicles had to be left outside the complex; the brochure said that we would be transferred to our cabin in an “electric carriage.” I could see one of them waiting by the Welcome Hut. It was an oversize golf buggy.

“I just think we need to get out in the fresh air. There’s no air in our house,” Dad said.

“There’s no
TV
in our house,” I said, and then wished I hadn’t. It was true that Dad hadn’t replaced the TV, but I was the one who’d destroyed it.

We began walking toward the electric carriage. Dad gripped his sports bag so tight that the blood drained out of his fingers, making the sprouting hairs look darker. He’d gone quiet, which was never a good sign.

“Dad?” I said.

“There’ll be a TV where we’re staying. I got us a Comfort Plus cabin. It’s not quite as swish as the Executive, but, as you know, money is tight. Anyway, you won’t need telly because there’s every kind of sport you can think of, right here.”

“I can think of about three,” I said. “And I hate all of them.”

We arrived at the cart, and Dad gave the driver our cabin number and luggage, then turned back to me. “Maybe this week you’ll find the sport you’re really into,” he said. “The one you’re really good at.”

I shook my head slowly.

“Well,” Dad said. “There’s a TV.”

In the carriage, I rode up front with the driver — an old man with a gray beard — while Dad sat in the back with the bags. He tried to make light of the autumn wind blasting in through the open sides. “Welcome to the great outdoors!” he shouted, taking in a deep satisfied breath. I could see a Starbucks in the distance.

Leisure World was nature with a perimeter fence: a sports complex with shops and restaurants, set in the middle of the woods. Everybody stayed in wooden cabins or wooden houses or tall terraces, depending on how rich they were, and families bicycled past in tracksuits. There was so much nylon, and so much wood, that one match could have caused a fire you could see from space. There was a huge dome in the distance, a heated “tropical paradise” swimming center with a wave machine and palm trees and rapids. I’d seen it in the brochure; it was Leisure World’s centerpiece.

I never would have admitted it to Dad, but I felt a thrill of anticipation as we left the all-weather playing fields and tennis courts behind and drove deeper into the forest. The shadows of the tall, planted pines darkened the inside of the cart, and I thought I heard a long, low hum. You could forget — if you tried — about the plastic nonsense of Leisure World, and concentrate on the dark heart of the woods. You knew that when the light fell, the creatures would wake. You knew that in a thousand years, when every single one of these happy vacationing families was dead and buried, nature would take this place over again. Ivy would cover the little cabins, and the thick roots of trees would burst through the floors. Eventually the water in the Tropical Dome would turn green, and fish would reclaim the Jacuzzi. There’d be screaming birds in the palm trees, and foxes looting the store cupboards, trotting through the restaurants.

“Daniel!” shouted Dad. “You haven’t seen the plant food, have you?”

He had his head down and was rummaging around in our bags, looking for nutrition for his beloved tomato plant. I didn’t answer because a girl had stepped out into the middle of the road. She was wearing a red hoodie over a swimsuit. Her hair was bedraggled and wet. I looked at the old man driving the cart and waited for him to slow down. He didn’t, and the girl didn’t move.

“Aren’t you going to . . . ?” I said to the driver.

“What?” the driver said.

We were five meters away when I grabbed the wheel and dragged it to the left. We missed the girl by centimeters, but we crashed through a wooden barrier, and the carriage flipped onto its side. My world tumbled, and I smacked my head against the dashboard. When the carriage came to a rest, I was on my back, looking up at a giant oak. The driver had landed on top of me, and he was less than happy. “What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?” he said.

“What were
you
doing?” I said. “You nearly ran that girl over.”

“What girl?” he shouted. I climbed out from under the driver and stood, looking out onto the road. There was nobody there but Dad, shaking his head and nursing his tomato plant.

“What was that about, Daniel?” asked Dad as we walked the rest of the way to our cabin.

“The bloke was about to run over a girl,” I said.

“He reckons there wasn’t anyone there,” Dad said.

“Who are you going to believe?”

“Well, given your recent track record —”

“What? Oh, thanks.”

“Look, lad, that’s just the sort of behavior I was hoping you might avoid on this holiday. You could’ve killed the old bloke, pulling the car off the road like that. You could’ve killed all of us.”

“It was a
golf buggy.
Nobody dies in a golf-buggy crash.”

I thought back to the girl on the road. Faint wisps of steam had risen from her shoulders. I’d had hallucinations before. It was all part of the behavior Dad was hoping I would avoid. But he had his behaviors, too, since Mum left. They mainly revolved around the Star and Sailor Pub, where he would play the
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
video game, drink nine pints of bitter ale, and then come home with a broken nose and hot sauce down his shirt. Cutting loose, he called it.

We arrived outside our Comfort Plus cabin. It was small and dark, overhung by a sprawling cedar. There was one big window and one small one. It looked like someone had punched our cabin in the face.

As we were taking the bags inside, two women in tennis gear cycled onto the drive of the cabin next to ours. They were a bit younger than Dad, both with the same springy curls and broad smiles. Sisters. Dad was carefully lifting the cherry-tomato plant from the ground. I was a bit embarrassed that he’d brought it in the first place, so to see him publicly talking to the plant as though it were a baby was mortifying.

“Welcome to Leisure World,” one of the women said to me grandly. She was being sarcastic.

“You know you can never leave,” the other one said. “This is Chrissy and I’m Tash.”

Chrissy was shorter and had a little gray in her hair. The younger one, Tash, wore more tightly fitting clothes and an expensive-looking bracelet.

“I’m Daniel,” I said. I looked at Dad, but I really didn’t know what to say, because he was fondling the tomatoes like the pearls of a priceless necklace.

“I’m Rick,” he said without looking up. He’d only been calling himself Rick for about a month, and it still made me wince. He used to be Richard.

“Hello,” Tash said. “Have you been here before?”

“Nope,” Dad said.

“It’s our first time, too. We’ve come here to get in shape.” She said it with a smile, and it seemed blatantly obvious to me that she was fishing for a compliment, because they were both thin as rakes. I waited for Dad to say so.

“Right,” he said.

“What brings you to Leisure World, then?” asked Tash.