“Yes,” I say, in a voice that means no. Mum’s got to understand that I mean no.
“She’s too young,” says Mum. “It’s all right, Sapphy, don’t look so scared. I’m not leaving you.”
Dad flashes with anger. “Are we never going to have a life of our own again?” he asks fiercely. “They’re not babies anymore. Come down to the sea with me, Jennie.”
But Mum shakes her head. I feel guilty now as well as scared. I hate it when Dad’s angry, and it’s my fault this time.
“I’ll go on my own then,” says Dad. His face is hard. He turns away. “Don’t bother to wait up for me, Jennie.”
“Mathew!” says Mum, but the door swings wide, and Dad’s vanished into the night. The door bangs.
“Go on up to bed now, Sapphy,” says Mum in a tired, quiet voice.
I go up to bed. There are two bedrooms in our cottage. Mum and Dad sleep in one, and I sleep in the other. Conor has the best deal of all. There’s a ladder up from my bedroom that goes into the loft, where Conor sleeps. Dad made him a window in one end. When Conor wants to be alone, he can pull up the ladder and no one can get him.
I get undressed, thinking sleepily about the bonfire and about Mum and Dad arguing; then I put it out of my mind. I roll into bed and snuggle down deep under the duvet, and sleep comes up over me like a tide.
I don’t know anything yet.
I don’t know that this is the last night of me and Conor, Mum and Dad, all safe together. I don’t know that the two halves of my family are starting to rip apart while I sleep.
But I dream about the mermaid of Zennor. I dream that I’m tracing the deep knife cut that slashes across her body. I’m trying to rub it out, so that the mermaid will be whole and well again. I dream that she opens her wooden eyes and smiles at me.
CHAPTER TWO
NEXT MORNING I WAKE up late to the smell of cooking. Dad’s in the kitchen, frying mushrooms in the big black pan. He’s whistling softly through his teeth. Mum’s banging knives into the drawer.
“He didn’t come home until eight this morning,” Conor whispers to me.
The atmosphere in the kitchen is thick with anger. Conor and I retreat into the living room with a bowl of cereal each. As we eat, they start to quarrel again. Their voices grow loud. “Are you crazy, Mathew, taking that boat out at night alone when you’d been drinking?”
“I didn’t take the boat out.”
“Don’t lie to me. I can smell the sea on you. Look at the wet on your clothes. It wasn’t enough to risk your neck climbing down those rocks in the dark; you had to take the boat out too. I haven’t slept a wink. Are you out of your mind?”
Dad’s voice crashes back. “I know what I’m doing. I’m in no danger. Are you going to stay on land for the rest of your life, Jennie? If you’d only come with me—”
His voice breaks off. He’s angry with Mum too, just as much as she’s angry with him. But why? Dad knows Mum hates the sea. She never goes out in the boat, and for once I’m glad of it. It makes me shiver to think of them both away out there on the sea, on the dark water. So far away that even if I called as loud as I could, they’d never hear me.
“You know why I won’t come,” says Mum. “I’ve got good reason to keep away from the sea.” Her voice is full of meaning. We’re so used to the idea that Mum hates the sea and won’t go near it that we don’t ask why, but suddenly I want to know more.
“Conor, why won’t Mum ever go out in the Peggy Gordon?” I whisper. It’s always, always been Dad who takes me and Conor out on the sea, and Mum who stays at home. Conor shrugs, but suddenly I see in his face that he knows something I don’t.
“Conor! You’ve got to tell me. Just because I’m the youngest, no one ever tells me anything.”
“They didn’t exactly tell me either.”
“But you do know something.”
“I heard them talking one day,” says Conor reluctantly. “Mum was saying that she was going to cook a saddle of hare for Sunday dinner.”
“Hare! Yuck! I’m not eating that.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what Dad said. He said it was bad luck to eat a hare. So Mum said she didn’t care, she wasn’t superstitious. Dad said she was the most superstitious person he’d ever met in his life. And Mum said, Only over one thing, Mathew. And I’ve got a good reason to fear the sea.”
“What did she mean? What good reason?”
“I asked Dad later. I said they were talking so loud I couldn’t help overhearing. He wasn’t going to tell me, and then he did. He said a fortune-teller had told Mum’s fortune once, and after that she’d never gone out on the sea again. It was years ago, but she never has. Not once.”
“What do you think the fortune-teller said?”
“Dad wouldn’t tell me. It must have been something really bad, though.”
“Maybe the fortune-teller said that Mum would die by drowning.”
“Don’t be stupid, Saph. A fortune-teller wouldn’t ever say that to someone. You’re going to drown—that’ll be ten pounds please.”
“But she must have told Mum something terrible. Mum wouldn’t stop going in boats for the rest of her life otherwise—”
“Saph, please don’t go on about it or I’ll wish I hadn’t told you. And don’t let them know you know. Dad said not to tell you in case you got scared.”
Mum’s and Dad’s voices rise again. Why do they have to argue so much? I hardly ever quarrel with Conor.
“I’m going in to make some toast,” says Conor. “That’ll stop them.”
“I’ll come with you.”
Mum and Dad are standing by the stove. They go quiet when they see us, but the air prickles with all the bad things they’ve said. Sometimes I think that if adult quarrels had a smell, they would smell like burned food. Dad’s mushrooms are shriveled up and black. He sees me looking at them, and he picks up the pan and scrapes the burned mushrooms into the pig bin.
What a waste. I love mushrooms.
That night Conor and I bike up to see his friend Jack. We stay longer than we mean to, because Jack’s Labrador bitch has three puppies. We haven’t played with them before, because they’ve been too little, but now they’re seven weeks old. Jack lets us hold one each. My puppy is plump and wriggly, and she sniffs my fingers, licks them, and makes a hopeful whining sound in the back of her throat. She is so beautiful. Conor and I have always wanted a dog, but we haven’t managed it yet.
“You are the most beautiful puppy in the whole world,” I whisper to her, holding her close to my face. She has a funny little folded-down left ear and soft, inquisitive brown eyes. If I could choose one of the puppies, it would be her. She wrinkles her nose, does a tiny puppy sneeze, and then snuggles in under my chin. I feel as if she’s chosen me already.
Poppy, the pups’ mother, she knows us, so she doesn’t mind us playing with them. She stays near, though, looking pleased and proud and watchful. Every time a pup tries to sneak away to explore, Poppy fetches it back and drops it in the basket. I love the way Poppy makes her mouth soft to pick up the pups by the scruff of the neck.
We forget about the time. When we remember, it’s getting late, and we have to rush.
“Come on, Saph. Mum’s going to kill me if we’re any later!”
Conor’s up ahead, racing. My bike’s too small for me, and I have to pedal like crazy, but it still won’t go fast. When Conor gets a new one, I’ll have his old one. Dad says maybe at Christmas Conor will get his new bike.
“Wait for me!” I yell, but Conor’s away in the distance. At the last bend he waits for me to catch up.
“You are so slow,” he grumbles as we bike the final downhill stretch side by side.
“I’m just as fast as you are; it’s only my bike that’s slow,” I say. “If I had your bike…” Conor’s already told me he’ll paint his old bike for me when he gets a new one, and I can keep the lights. He’ll paint it any color I like.
We reach the gate where the track goes down past our cottage. Ours isn’
t the only cottage here, but our neighbors are set far apart. At night we can see the lights from the other cottages’ windows, shining out against the dark hillside. Our cottage is closest to the sea.
“Look, there’s Mum. What’s she doing?” asks Conor suddenly.
Mum has climbed to the top of the stile opposite our cottage. She’s standing there, outlined against the light of the sunset. She strains forward, as if she’s looking for something.
“Something’s wrong,” says Conor. He drops his bike on the side of the track and starts to run. I drop mine too, but its handlebars get tangled up with Conor’s bike. I stop to sort out the bikes and prop them against the wall. I want to run to Mum, but I also don’t want to. I hang back. I have a cold feeling in my heart that tells me that Conor is right. Something is wrong. Something has happened.
This is when the long night begins. The longest night of my life so far, even though it’s summer and the nights are short.
None of us goes to bed. At first we all sit together in the kitchen, round the table, waiting. Sometimes I start to fall asleep. My head lolls, and then I lurch out of sleep just before I tip off my chair. Mum doesn’t notice, and she doesn’t send me to bed. She watches the door as if any moment it will open, and Dad will be back.
“Dad often takes the boat out this late,” Conor keeps saying stubbornly, as the clock moves on. Ten o’clock. Eleven o’clock.
“Not like this,” says Mum. Her lips barely move. I know that she’s right, and so does Conor. Something’s wrong. When Dad goes fishing, it’s usually with Badge or Pete. He does go on his own sometimes, but he never, ever just disappears without telling us where he’s going. We help him load up the boat, and often we watch him go out on the tide.
But this time Dad has said nothing. He was working in the garden all afternoon. Mum heard him singing. She went to lie down for half an hour, because she was so tired from not sleeping the night before. She must have fallen asleep. When she woke, the sun was low. She called to Dad, but no one answered. She went down the track and called again, but everything was still. Our neighbor Mary Thomas came out.
“Is something wrong, Jennie?” she asked. “I heard you calling for Mathew.”
“No, nothing’s wrong,” said Mum. “It’s just I don’t know where he is. Maybe he’s working on the boat. I’ll go down to the mooring and check.”
Imagine Mum going all the way down to the cove, so near to the sea. She must have been scared, but she did it. She slipped on a rock as she climbed down and cut her hand on mussel shells and got blood all over her jeans. She went down as far as she dared, until she could see that there was no boat tied up at the mooring place. The tide was high, just on the turn. Mum called and called again even though she was sure by now that Dad wasn’t there. She couldn’t stop herself calling.
“I had a feeling that Mathew was nearby. He was trying to get to me, but he couldn’t.”
Mum doesn’t tell us all this as we sit around the kitchen table. Much later that night, when she’s told us to go upstairs and get some sleep, we sit on the stairs and listen to her talking to Mary Thomas, telling her the things she hasn’t told us—about calling Dad, and thinking he was nearby but he couldn’t get to her.
Dawn comes, and Dad’s still not back. Mary Thomas is with Mum in the kitchen. Conor and I are still sitting on the stairs, waiting and listening. I must have fallen asleep, because suddenly I wake up with Conor’s arm round me. I’m stiff all over. My head hurts, and the heavy, frightened feeling inside is stronger than ever.
Mum said Dad would be back in the morning. But it’s morning now, and he’s not here. There’s a murmur of voices through the closed kitchen door, and we strain to make out what Mum’s saying.
“I don’t know what to do now, Mary!” she says, and we can hear the fear and panic in her voice. I wait for Mary to tell her to relax and calm down, because Dad’s been out in that boat a million times and no harm has ever come to him. But Mary doesn’t. Morning light creeps into our cottage, and Mary says, “Maybe we should call the coast guard now, Jennie.”
“Come on, Saph,” says Conor. He stands up, and his face suddenly looks much older. We push through the kitchen doorway, and Mum stares at us as if she’s forgotten who we are. She looks awful.
Mary says to Conor, “I was saying to your mum, Conor, that maybe it’s time to call the coast guard now. It’s not like your father to go off like this and leave your mother worrying. There’s enough light to search by. If he’s out there fishing, there’s no harm done if the coast guard happens by. I’ll get the phone for you now, Jennie.”
Mum phones, and everything begins. Once it starts you can’t stop it. I’m still clinging to the hope that the police and the coast guard will say we’re being stupid to bother them. Take it easy, your dad’ll be fine. Wait awhile, and he’ll turn up. But they don’t.
The coast guard jeep comes bouncing down the track. People talk into radios and mobile phones. The police crowd into the kitchen, filling it with their uniforms.
Neighbors knock on the door. Mary goes out to talk to them, quietly, so that none of us will hear her telling the story over and over again. There are mugs of tea on the kitchen table, some empty, some half full. People start bringing sandwiches and cakes and cookies until there’s so much food I think it’ll never get eaten. I can’t eat anything. I try to swallow a cookie and I choke, and Mum holds a glass of water to my mouth while I sip and splutter. Mum’s face is creased with fear and lack of sleep.
The old life of me and Dad and Mum and Conor has stopped like a clock. Another life has begun. I can hear it ticking: Your dad has gone, your dad has gone, your dad has gone.
The sun shines brightly, and it’s getting warm. Conor stays downstairs with Mum, but I go up to my bedroom and wrap the duvet tight around me and close my eyes and try to bring Dad back. I shut out the sounds of people in the kitchen below and concentrate. If you love someone so much, how can he not hear you when you call to him?
“Dad,” I say, “Dad. Please. Please come home. Can you hear me, Dad? It’s me, Sapphy. I won’t let Mum be angry with you if you just come home.”
Nobody. Nothing. All I can hear is the rushing sound of my own blood, because the duvet is wrapped around my ears.
“Dad, please…”
I sit up, cold all over, and strain my ears for the two things I want to hear more than anything else in the world. One is the beating of Dad’s heart, as I heard it when he was carrying me down from the Midsummer Fire. The other is his voice rising up in the summer air, singing “O Peggy Gordon.”
“O Peggy Gordon, you are my darling,
Come sit you down upon my knee….”
My name’s not Peggy, I used to say when I was little. Come and sit on my knee anyway, Dad always answered, and he’d cup his hands under my elbows and swoop me up to sit on his lap and I would bounce and laugh and he would laugh back and bounce me higher and higher until Mum told him to stop before I was sick. But she wasn’t ever angry then. She was laughing too.
If only time would go back, like the tide. Back and back, past yesterday, past the night before. Back when the bonfire wasn’t lit, back to when none of this had happened. And then we could all start again…
The coast guard searches up and down the coast, but they find nothing. All that day they search, all the next day and the one after. A helicopter comes down from the air-sea rescue. It flies low and hammers the air, searching coves and cliffs.
After two days Conor explains to me that they are now scaling down the search. He tells me what that means. It means that if Dad is in the sea or on the cliffs, they don’t believe that they’ll find him safe anymore. Too much time has passed. The helicopter stops flying, and there are only neighbors in our kitchen now, instead of police and coast guard men and volunteer searchers. And then the neighbors go back to their own lives, except for Mary.
A few days later Mum says she thinks it’s better if we both go back to school. It isn’t doing us any good
, staying in the cottage and waiting, always waiting.
Five weeks later a climber on the cliffs miles down the coast sees something. It’s the hull of the Peggy Gordon, wedged upside down between the rocks. He reads the name on it. The coast guard men go down, and a team of divers searches the area. There is no sign of Dad. Finally, they pull the boat off the rocks and tow it in to shore, so they can examine it thoroughly and find out what caused the accident. But the boat doesn’t give a single clue.
Mum says to us, “We have to accept it now. Your dad had an accident.”
“No!” says Conor, slamming his fists on the table. “No, no, no. Dad wouldn’t lose the Peggy Gordon like that, on a calm night. That’s not what happened.” He bangs out of the house and gets his bike and disappears. I think he goes up to Jack’s. Anyway, he comes home late, and when he creeps into my room to climb up his loft ladder, I’m already half asleep.
“Conor?”
“Ssh.”
“It’s all right. Mum’s asleep. She’s been—”
“Crying?”
“No. Just sitting, not looking at anything. I hate it when she does that.”
“I know.”
“Conor, where’s Dad?”
I’m still half asleep, or I’d never ask that question. How can Conor know, when nobody knows? The question just slips out. But Conor doesn’t get angry. He tiptoes over and kneels by my bed.
“I don’t know what happened, Saph. But he’s not drowned. I’m sure of it. We’d know if he was drowned. We’d feel it. We’d feel a difference if he was dead.”
“Yes,” I say. Relief floods me. “You’re right. I don’t feel as if he’s dead either.”
Conor nods. “We’re going to find Dad, Saph. However long it takes. But you mustn’t tell Mum. Swear and promise.”
“Swear and promise,” I answer, and I spit on my right palm and Conor spits on his, and we slap our palms together. After that I sleep.
They hold a memorial service for Dad in the church. Mum explains that we can’t have a proper funeral because Dad’s body hasn’t been found. It hasn’t been found because there isn’t a body to find. Dad isn’t dead, I think, and I know Conor is thinking the same thing.
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