7. Morality and Sharks
The next day, one of the parents' worries manifested itself all too quickly for Sue. The family had just arrived at their breakfast table when Karen addressed her mother with a concern regarding the previous day.
Karen had just ordered a Full English breakfast when she addressed her mother, "Mummy," she started, as Sue gave Pete a knowing glance, "you and daddy did a bad thing yesterday. You left me and Ben and Jake alone on the beach to go and have a drink. That's when children go missing and never return. I heard it on the news before. It does happen and anyway some people said it's more likely to happen in a foreign country."
"Karen, darling," Sue replied, "firstly, to say it's more likely that you'd be taken or go missing abroad is a bit stereotypical. Secondly, we left you for a bit, yes, but that nice couple from the next cabin were watching you and anyway..."
"But Mummy," Karen interrupted, "they're not our official guardians and we're too young to be left alone at our age. Jake's not even sixteen yet, he's only thirteen. Ben's nine and I'm seven. What if there'd been an accident like us being eaten by sharks. We wouldn't have been able to survive and you wouldn't have been there to save us because you went off to drink coffee which you think is more important than your children getting eaten by sharks. Parents have a duty of care for their children, not for some silly drink like coffee. Coffee's disgusting, you should have drunk more sensible drinks like squash or juice, not coffee. Coffee's full of caffeine which is bad for you. Also you should have brought the drinks onto the beach where you could see us and save us from evil attack sharks"
"Karen. The number of sharks in North Spain isn't very many and anyway, they've never been spotted at the beach we were at. Furthermore, as I was going to say before you interrupted me, the cafe daddy and me chose was very close to the beach and we could see you at all times." Sue said, reassuringly. "And anyway, Spanish coffee's fantastic and sometimes having caffeine is necessary to keep me and daddy awake and alert to when you three are going crazy" she muttered to herself.
"Yes, well, even if there have never been any sharks spotted at the beach where we were, that doesn't mean there might not have been some yesterday. You can't have been looking at us all the time because when you were talking to the waiter for ordering you were looking at him not us and when you were drinking your coffee you couldn't have been looking at us because when you are drinking you nearly always are looking at bottom of the cup" Karen continued, deep into her argument, "and it might have been then when the sharks came and savaged us, for all you know and you wouldn't have realised and even if you had, you'd have been too late by the time you got there."
"OK Karen, maybe we weren't looking at you three for 100% of the time, but you're okay aren't you?" Pete chimed in, attempting to break up the spiralling discussion. "Mummy and I promise that we won't do something like that again, don't we mummy?"
"Yes, darling, we do. It won't happen again." Sue added.
"I'm going to write that down and make you sign it when we get back to the cabin." Karen replied, still in her legal element.
"'Thank you mummy and daddy for addressing my concern and taking future action, I really appreciate what you've done for me'" Pete whispered under his breath to Sue, who laughed quietly at her husband's sarcastic, mocking comment. The breakfasts arrived at last and the family was quiet for a while.
"What are we going to do today?" Jake asked, desperate to get away from the legal interests of Karen. They eventually agreed as a family to go onto the deck and look for sea life as they planned the rest of the day.
"What if sharks attack me, Ben and Jake when you aren't looking?" Karen asked Sue, who sighed.
"Can we kill a fish and take it to the cabin and see how fast it decomposes?" Ben asked, "It is scientific." he added quickly to defend his love of dead animals and their rates of decomposition. He'd had some experience in the past, with birds and frogs.
Jake grunted, and took up his ever increasing responsible role, "Karen there is a very little chance of shark attack as we're quite a way above the water. Ben, no you can't get a fish from this high up and even if you could, it's not going in the cabin with us. It'd stink!"
Ben ignored Jake's comments and went on a walk looking for dead birds or sea life. He returned a while later holding a dead seagull. "Please mum and dad can I take this with me for experimenting and seeing what it died from?" he asked but got no 'yes' votes, with both Pete and Sue defending Jake's comments on the smell of the decomposing animal.
"Anyway, it probably died of attack by a savage shark and the shark might have seen us and be waiting for when mummy and daddy's backs are turned before it comes for me and Ben and Jake..." Karen declared, glaring at her mother.
"KAREN WILL YOU PLEASE STOP BANGING ON ABOUT SHARK ATTACKS?" Sue yelled, "The bird probably died of old age or a heart attack. If it had been the victim of a shark, then it'd be covered in blood and tooth marks and would frankly not look very bird-like anymore."
After being yelled at in a surprisingly very public way, Karen ran off and hid from her mother. 'Great!' Sue thought sarcastically to herself. "Come on Pete, Jake, Ben, we'd better look for her..." she said to her family and, confidentially to Pete she finished, "I knew that yesterday's calm day was going to be a bizarre blip in the holiday." Pete could do nothing but agree and nodded at his wife as they scrambled off to look for their daughter. She was found 10 minutes later after the deck search proved fruitless and Pete suggested they look for her outside their cabin.
"Karen!" he started, "What are you doing here?"
"I got embarrassed when mummy shouted and so I ran off," she replied, "then I remembered that I had to write down the promise that you made at breakfast about the sharks. So I came down here and waited for you to come and open the door so that I could write the promise down on a piece of paper and make you and mummy sign it."
"Well, darling," Pete replied, relieved to have found Karen safe, "let's go and get the promise written up!", he opened the door to the room and Karen headed straight for the desk and wrote up the following; We, Peter and Susan Brockman promise to not leave our children alone again on this holiday in case of attack by sharks or any other problems that might happen, signed on this day by Peter and Susan Brockman, parents and legal guardians of Karen, Jake and Benjamin Brockman.
'When she ran off, she wasn't keeping the promise. It's all one rule for one and another rule for another with her' Pete thought to himself as he signed the document, a glance at his wife showed that she was having similar thoughts too.
"Done?" Karen asked, after a couple of minutes. Sue and Pete handed back the legal document to Karen, "Good," she continued, "I'm going to put this on the wall with a bit of Blu-Tack. Can you also sign these copies I made for you to keep in your pocket or bag so that you always have a copy of the promise with you so that the promise is always valid and unbreakable?"
"She's really thought this through well hasn't she?" Jake asked cheekily. He was met with glares from his parents that were obviously saying don't start, don't encourage her, she doesn't need it. She knows too much already, thank you.
"Hang on a minute," Jake continued, "stop signing stuff. What's Ben got?"