Short story (Banksy)

It started as a dare.

“Bet you won’t do it,” said Sam, grinning as the North Sea wind whipped across Cromer Pier.

“Yes I will!” Ellie shot back, clutching the spray can tighter. “We’ll make our own Banksy, and people will come from everywhere to see it.”

Little Noah trailed behind them, dragging his woolly hat over his ears. “You’re both going to get us arrested,” he muttered, but followed anyway.

Since spotting the Banksy mural on Cromer’s sea wall last summer—a hermit crab stealing local crabs homes—they’d been obsessed. Even now, weather-worn and fading, it pulled tourists with cameras and sketchbooks.

If Banksy could leave his mark, why couldn’t they?

That evening, as the sun dipped behind the cliffs, they snuck down Jetty Street. Past flint cottages and fish shops, toward the bricked-up archways where legends whispered of tunnels beneath the town. Smugglers once hid there, they said—maybe even ghosts.

“Here,” Ellie whispered, stopping at a crumbling doorway behind the old lifeboat house. She’d found it weeks ago, half-hidden by brambles. “No one will see us.”

They worked fast. Ellie sketched a girl flying a kite shaped like a crab—Cromer’s unofficial mascot. Sam filled in the red, his hands shaking. Noah stood watch, jumping at every gull’s cry.

“It actually looks… good,” Sam admitted as Ellie stepped back.

But before she could reply, a voice rang out behind them.

“Caught you red-handed!”

They spun around. An old woman in a purple coat and woolly hat stood watching, her walking stick raised like a sword.

“It’s not what it looks like!” Ellie blurted.

“Oh, it’s exactly what it looks like,” the woman said. Her sharp eyes twinkled in the dim light. Then, to their surprise, she chuckled.

“You think you’re the first to play here? I know these tunnels. Used to sneak in myself as a girl. And I can tell you—if you’re going to pull a Banksy, you need an escape plan.”

The children gaped.

“You… know about Banksy?” Sam said.

“Maybe,” she said, smirking. “Or maybe I know more than you’d guess.”

She tapped the bricks with her stick, and with a soft groan, a section swung inward. Behind it yawned a narrow tunnel.

“Follow me, unless you fancy explaining yourselves to the coastguard.”

They hesitated, but curiosity won.

Inside, the air smelled of salt and earth. The torchlight flickered over old bricks and rusting hooks left by Cromer’s smugglers centuries ago.

“Why are you helping us?” Noah asked timidly.

“Because everyone needs a little mischief now and then,” she said. “Even me.”

At last, they emerged by the cliffs on the far edge of town, unseen.

“Go on home,” she said. “And don’t worry—I won’t tell.”

“Who are you?” Ellie asked.

The woman only winked. “Let’s just say I know how to leave a mark.”

Two weeks later, Ellie spotted a post on Instagram: “New Banksy in Cromer?” with a photo of their crab-kite girl.

It had gone viral.

The caption beneath read: “Confirmed: Banksy was here again.”

No one suspected three children… or a mysterious old lady with secrets of her own.

And in a little cottage near the cliffs, the woman smiled to herself as she uncapped a fresh spray can