The Ten-to-Eight Boat

About this book

Every school morning at ten to eight, the blue-hulled Peggy Bell leaves Torsay pier and collects the only five children who live on the off-islands of the Carrachan Isles. This is her last school year: her gravel-voiced skipper, Donnie Laing, is retiring, and the council has ordered a shiny catamaran with seatbelts and a television. Ishbel keeps the count of every crossing in pencil on the cabin roof and tells nobody she dreads leaving for the mainland hostel. Kit, newly arrived from Wolverhampton, is seasick and sure everyone is laughing at him. Calum wants to be a skipper. Twins Neil and Morven come from an island of six people and four hundred sheep, and Morven speaks to almost no one but the boat. Told in mornings and afternoons shuffled like photographs from a tin, this is the year five children learn what a boat, and each other, can carry. But why is Donnie really going ashore?