“And where do you think you’re all going?” Claire said as she caught the others trying to sneak out of the back door. “You better not be going somewhere without me!”

“Out,” said Ethel. “And you can’t come, Claire. You’re ill off school.”

“Not any more I’m not. It’s the weekend,” Claire said, already putting on her boots. “So where are we going, then?”

“We don’t know,” said Tina.

“We’re just following Daniel,” said Ethel.

“We’re going to see the stinkhole,” said Daniel. “It’s brand new!”

“The what?!”

“The stinkhole!”

“You just made that up, Daniel,” said Claire. “There’s no such thing as stinkholes.”

“We think,” said Tina. “That Daniel means a sinkhole.”

“No, I mean a stinkhole,” Daniel said.” A stinkhole is a sinkhole that stinks. And this stinkhole stinks so much that if you smell it at all you die INSTANTLY!”

“Yeah, that doesn’t sound likely,” Claire said, as she finished tying her shoelaces. “I mean, if everyone died as soon as they smelt it, who’d be around to know that smelling it killed you? Cause everyone that had smelt it would be dead!”

“Ted said,” Daniel said.

“And…?”

“And Ted doesn’t have a sense of smell,” Daniel explained. “So he survived.”

“Oh right, that actually makes quite a lot of sense,” said Claire, putting on her sunhat and following the others out of the door. “I still don’t know why you’re so excited by a hole, though, Daniel. Holes are rubbish. Like the well. Or Dad’s boring cave full of stupid crabs.”

“I dunno,” Daniel shrugged, before finally giving in to all his excitement and sprinting off towards the fields behind the garden that went up towards the cliffs which was where the stinkhole supposedly was. “I just want to see what it smells like!”

“Last one there’s a rotten Claire!” said Ethel, as her and Tina ran after Daniel.

“You can’t see smells, Daniel!” Claire shouted after them, indignantly. “Hey, wait, how are WE going to survive?”

But whatever her misgivings, Claire still trudged off up the path behind the others as they made their way towards the stinkhole and all that it promised to be.

___________

Notes:

1. Written on May 19th, 2024