Dead Man's İsland - John Escott - 1-1

1

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Coming to England

My name is Carol Sanders. I live in England now, but when i was younger, I lived in Hong Kong. My father was a businessman there and my mother worked as a secretary. We lived in Hong Kong for seven years.

I was happy at school, with lots of friends, and we had a good time. I liked pop music - the Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Jake Rosso were my favourites.

Jake Rosso was my favourite singer. He died in a car accident the year I left school, but I listened to his pop records all the time. I had hundreds of pictures and photos of him on my bedroom wall.

Then one day in winter when i was seventeen, things began to go wrong for me.

My father went to Australia on business. I loved him very much and didn't like him going away.

'Come home quickly,' I always said to him.

He was in Australia for two weeks. Then, on the day of his jounary home, an aeroplane from Sydney crashed into the sea just south of Hong Kong. Everybody on the plane died.

I heard about the plane crash on television. At first I didn't think about my father. Then I remembered he was flying back from Sydney on that day.

'Oh, no!' I cried.

I telephoned the airport but they didn't know the names all the passengers then.

'Perhaps my father didn't get that plane,' I thought. 'Oh, please! Please!'

My mother was at work and I called her on the telephone. She came home quickly and we went to the airport and waited for news.

Later, we learned my father was on the plane.

'It's not true!' I shouted.

But it was true, and I began to cry.

I cried for weeks and weeks. I spent many days alone in my room. I was loney and sad and I wanted to die, too.

I stopped going out with my friends. I didn't want to see other people. I stopped listening to Jake Rosso's records, and took his pictures off my bedroom wall. I didn't listen to music or watch television. Nothing mattered anymore.

Then I stopped crying. I stopped feeling sad and began to feel angry.

'Why did it happen to him?' I asked my mother. 'Why do the best people die? Jake Rosso. My father.'

'I... I don't know, Carol,' my mother said. She was unhappy, too.

At the time of the plane crash, I was a student at college. I enjoyed the work and college life very much, but after my father's death I stopped doing my work at college. I began to go out with some new friends. They were different from my other friends, and my mother didn't like them.

'They're bad people, Carol,' she told me. 'They do dangerous things.'

'They're exciting,' I said. 'And I liked them.'

I knew she was angry but I didn't care. But then I learned my new friends took drugs, and I began to take grugs, too. It was wrongand stupid, I know that now, but I was unhappy and angry.

The police came to the college to arrest some of the students. They didn't arrest me, but I had to leave the college. It was a bad time.

My mother was very unhappy with me. 'What am I going to do with you, Carol?' she said.

'I'm sorry,' I told her.

'We'll go back to England,' she said. 'You can find a college there. Perhaps you can be happier in England.'

'All right,' I said. 'I want to forget what's happened. I want to forget what I've done and begin a new life, be a new person.'

A month later, we came back to England. We lived in London, in a hotel. It was strange, at first, with all the red buses and everybody speaking English. It was the beginning of the summer, three months before college began in the autumn. London was full of tourists.

We looked at all the famous buildings - Buckingham Palace, The Tower of London. And we went to restaurants and theatres in the evenings. It was interesting and exciting and I began to forget the bad times in Hong Kong.

'I'm pleased we came to London,' I told my mother.

But after a few weeks, she said, 'You need to find a college, Carol. You must go on studying. And I need a job.'

That evening we looked in the newspaper.

'What about this?' I said. I showed my mother a job in the newspaper.

SECRETARY

for the summer months

on a small private island in Scotland.

Live with the family in a big house.

Interesting work and good py

for the right person.

Phone Greta Ross. Telephone number 071...

'Well, that sounds interesting,' said my mother. 'I'd like to work as a secretary on island in Scotland. It's a beautiful country, Carol, and you can go to a college there in the autumn.'

'And it's a place to live for the summer,' I said. 'Hotels are expensive.'

My mother telephoned Greta Ross.

'Come and see me tomorrow,' Greta Ross told her. 'Come to the Savoy Hotel at eleven o'clock.'