Secrets of the Tides

by Hannah Richell

  ‘Too fast,’ panted Alfie, stumbling on the shifting stones.

  ‘Well maybe if you weren’t wearing those wellies and that stupid cape you’d be able to walk a bit faster.’ Dora was cross. Alfie had insisted on wearing his Superman outfit for their beach trip and no amount of wheedling or cajoling could persuade him otherwise.

  ‘You’ll be hot,’ Cassie had tried.

  ‘You’ll look like a wally,’ Dora had added.

  But Alfie was adamant. ‘I need it.’

  ‘Why can’t you go as Clark Kent, before he turns into Superman? You could just wear your ordinary clothes and no one would know who you are? You’d be in disguise!’ Dora had said.

  ‘Or even better, come as the Invisible Man?’ Cassie said drily.

  ‘No. Superman. Superman is the bestest superhero of them all.’

  The girls rolled their eyes at each other. Alfie had recently entered an action-figure phase and they’d heard a lot about the ‘bestest superheroes’. They left him to his costume, deciding to turn their attention to the more annoying matter of the toys.

  ‘You can’t take Lego to the beach,’ Cassie had said, scanning through the growing heap of goodies Alfie was lining up by the door. ‘You’ll lose it. And look,’ she said, kicking at a lump of brightly coloured plastic. ‘Why do you want to take this car? The batteries don’t even work!’

  ‘It’s not a car,’ he replied. ‘It’s a digger.’ Alfie whizzed the toy along the floor, expertly wielding its bucket and performing the appropriate digging noises.

  Cassie sighed. Both of them knew it was impossible rationalising with him, but Dora tried again with a little more patience. ‘How about we take a rucksack? You can wear it on your back, like a special rocket pack.’

  ‘Superman doesn’t have a rocket pack,’ Alfie corrected.

  ‘OK,’ Dora tried again. ‘But if Superman was going to the beach and he wanted to take his special gadgets, where would he put them?’

  ‘Down his underpants?’ offered Cassie.

  Alfie giggled.

  ‘Thanks, Cassie. That’s really helpful. No,’ she said, turning back to Alfie, ‘he’d put them in a rocket blaster backpack. Right?’

  Alfie looked at her uncertainly.

  ‘Right, Cassie?’ Dora urged, appealing to her sister for help.

  ‘Sure,’ replied Cassie with another laboured sigh. ‘Look, I really don’t care what toys you kids bring, but if you don’t hurry up I’m going to the beach on my own, and that’s final.’

  Dora was stung; not just by the indignity of being lumped into the ‘kids’ category with Alfie, but more by the total injustice of it all. ‘You can’t. Mum said we both had to look after Alfie today,’ she argued.

  ‘Well get a move on, otherwise I’m off and you can look after him here by yourself instead.’

  Dora fumed. Bloody Cassie, with her new friends and her superior attitude; and their mum wasn’t much better, always off behind closed doors having her private conversations, or racing off to campus for important meetings. Weren’t they all supposed to be on summer holiday? The last thing she wanted was to spend the day tromping round after Cassie and Alfie. It was going to be a scorcher and she had planned to spend it down at the beach, splashing in the waves, sipping cold Cokes straight from the bottle and watching sunburnt campers squabble and pack up their pitches ready for the long drive home. It should have been perfect; the perfect last day before she woke on Monday, jammed her feet back into shoes and socks, picked up her school bag, and took herself off to start what both her parents kept calling One of the most important years of her life. GCSEs. They hung over her like a curse; them, and Sam Skinner.

  Cassie had met Sam a week earlier. She’d arrived at the local campsite with her parents in a flashy new caravan. She wore the standard teen uniform: torn jeans, scuffed trainers, T-shirt from some gig or other, an army shirt and her long black hair falling over her pale face like a curtain. Dora wasn’t sure how the two girls had met, but she’d seen them skulking around at the beach together, smoking cigarettes behind the skips in the car park or perched on the sea wall, sharing chips and talking to boys. Frankly it didn’t take a genius to realise that Dora was now redundant, replaced by Sam, a new and improved model.

  ‘I’m thirsty,’ Alfie piped up from beside Dora. ‘Can we stop?’ His little legs were working hard but it wasn’t easy for him to keep up with Cassie and Sam’s long stride across the uneven pebbles. Heat rose off them like roasted chestnuts beneath their feet.

  ‘Soon,’ replied Dora, cursing her sister and that annoying girl. ‘Hey!’ she shouted at them. ‘Slow down, will you? We can’t keep up.’

  Cassie’s snigger travelled back to them on the wind. ‘Told you not to bring all those toys, Dora.’

  She could have killed her.

  Even though Cassie hadn’t bothered to say, it was obvious where they were headed. She’d seen Cassie and Sam sneak off to the Crag earlier in the week with a couple of boys. She hadn’t been spying so much as keeping a lookout. Everyone knew teenagers only went to the Crag for two things: partying and making out. It was the perfect place for both. Dora had been there once before, as part of a silly schoolgirls’ dare, and she didn’t relish the thought of returning there now. But she didn’t have a choice; they’d been told to stick together.

  It wasn’t yet midday but the sun was beating down and making the air around them waver and shift in a surreal dream-like haze. The beach shimmered, as though she were looking at it though a funfair mirror. Dora wiped a trickle of sweat from her brow and then looked up for her sister. Cassie and Sam had finally come to a halt. They stood, dark silhouettes against the skyline at the far westerly corner of the beach where the sheer cliff face slashed the horizon at a perpendicular to meet the shore. They gazed intently out to sea. Dora squinted, following their line of sight. She could see a stain as dark as blood across the pebbles closest to water. The tide was going out. They’d timed it perfectly.

  Sam reached out and secured a footing on a piece of rock jutting out from the base of the cliff. She pulled herself up, her long hair catching in the breeze, and then reached out for Cassie’s hand. As Cassie crested the top, she half turned to look back at Dora and Alfie.

  ‘Are you coming or what?’ she yelled.

  Dora sighed. ‘Come on then, Alfie. Time for an adventure.’

  Her brother squeezed her hand tightly. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, looking up at her with big, round eyes. ‘I’ve got my cape. I can protect you.’

  He looked so sweet and earnest as he flapped his cloak about him importantly. Dora smiled down at him, and then turned to face the cliff. Helen would kill them if she knew what they were doing.

  The Crag was a sacred place in Summertown; a spot known only to local teens, and a secret location so closely guarded that only a few young holidaymakers from out of town had been initiated into its existence. At the far end of the beach, where the Lyme Bay cliffs descended into a jagged outcrop of rock pools and boulders stood a secret cave, tucked away deep within a stone gully. Its magic lay in the fact that it could only be reached at low tide and it took a certain determination, or recklessness, to seek it out. Once found, its limited accessibility added to the sense of danger and excitement. Inside the Crag’s depths you were safe from both the incoming tide and prying eyes, but if you missed the shift of the tide you could be stuck there for hours waiting for your exit route to be cleared at the whim of the ocean. The story at the local high school was that someone’s elder brother had stumbled upon it while looking for a new potholing challenge. The brother had told a few friends, who had told a few more. The news had spread and before long teenagers were heading there in droves for illicit parties and secret meetings. As the legend grew, so did the stories surrounding it. First it was an old smuggler’s den; then it became the home of a local crazy-eyed hermit; and most recently, myth had transformed the cave into a tomb for the victims of a notorious serial killer. Dora knew the stories were all made up, b
ut she still hated going there.

  Dora and Alfie drew in close to the jut of rock Cassie and Sam had disappeared over. Sam’s head popped up suddenly on the other side.

  ‘You’d better send Alfie over first,’ she suggested. ‘I’ll pull him up. His little legs won’t manage the rock face.’ It was the most she’d heard Sam utter in the week she’d known her.

  ‘This is crazy,’ Dora replied. ‘Why can’t we all just hang out on the beach? It would be much easier.’ She averted her gaze from the warning signs nailed to the cliff face that screamed of eroding cliffs and falling rocks and looked back helplessly towards the car park. It was nothing but a distant dot on the horizon.

  Sam ignored her plea and turned instead to Alfie. ‘You want to see the special bat cave, right, Alfie?’

  ‘Yeah!’ Alfie cried. ‘Bats!’

  Great, thought Dora. Now there was no getting out of it. She seized her brother by the waist and pushed him roughly up the stone face, his red cloak flapping wildly in her face.

  ‘Hold out your hands,’ Sam urged. ‘Attaboy. I’ve got you.’

  Suddenly Alfie was weightless in her arms. She let go and Sam pulled him up and over the rock face. She saw two kicking red wellies before they vanished completely from view.

  ‘I can fly!’ she heard Alfie shout from the other side of the stone buttress. His voice echoed wildly around, a hundred Alfies suddenly filling the cavernous space. She looked up at the dizzyingly high walls looming overhead and shivered, in spite of the heat.

  ‘Are you coming?’ Sam asked.

  It was her turn. Dora scrambled up the side of the wall, finding natural footholds in the rough stone. Sam towered above, holding out a hand to her, but she ignored it, too proud and too annoyed to accept her help. She was almost up and over the ledge when her left foot shot away from beneath her in a skid of loose rocks and gravel. Scrabbling to steady herself Dora lunged at the rock face, seizing at the ledge in panic and wincing as her hands fell heavily on a sharp shard of stone.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  Dora nodded, fighting to control the sting of tears in her eyes. It was a stupid slip, that’s all. She held her hands out and saw blood welling red and fierce amongst the gravel and small stones embedded in the skin of her palm.

  ‘That looks nasty.’

  ‘It’s nothing. Just a graze.’ She didn’t want to admit it hurt so she stood for a moment, just looking at the vivid crimson fluid as it welled up at the gash on her hand. It oozed up into a little pool and then trickled slowly down her wrist until it fell with a lazy splash onto the slate-coloured rock below her. There it lay, a vivid jewel-like stain upon the warm stone.

  ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ Sam asked again.

  Dora nodded. She looked up. The cliffs towered above her, dark and forbidding. She put her palm to her lips and sucked the wound, swallowing the metallic taste of blood until the throb dulled slightly. Then, with a sigh, she hauled herself over the rocky ledge and dropped down into the darkness below.

  Sinister stone walls rose up steeply from the rocky floor. They leaned inwards, meeting about twenty metres or so above their heads. Only a small gap in the stone canopy allowed a finger of daylight into the cavernous room. Dora looked up and saw a chink of blue a long way above her, but then had to look away; she was still dizzy from the heat outside the cave. She turned instead to look at the dripping walls around her covered with clumps of lurid green lichen and glistening with slime. Dotted across the rock face were a thousand different graffiti tags; names and dates scrawled all over the walls, some scratched, some painted, and some carved, by possibly the most dedicated young lovers, into the stone itself. The gritty floor was littered with the detritus of past parties: cans, bottles, cigarette butts and worse were strewn around. Old fishing net, a rotten wooden pallet and a forgotten oil drum had been positioned at one end of the cavern, makeshift party decorations now surplus to requirements. There was a low stone shelf rising up from the centre of the floor at the rear of the cavern, and next to it a circle of ash indicated where a bonfire had last burnt; it shone in the dark interior as white as cleanly picked bones. Dora shivered. She couldn’t think why anyone would want to hang out here. Sure it was private, tucked away safely from prying eyes, but it also stank. The air was cold and heavy with the smell of rotting vegetation and damp, salty kelp. It was plain creepy.

  Alfie, however, appeared to disagree. He ran around the cavernous space shouting and whooping, his delighted cries echoing off the walls and bouncing around them wildly. A seagull shrieked out of the shadows, beating its wings and making Dora jump.

  ‘A bat!’ cried Alfie ecstatically. She didn’t have the heart to correct him.

  Sam and Cassie were at the far end of the cave. Dora saw Sam kick the oil drum with a toe and then shrug off her faded green army shirt. She laid it on the ground and Cassie sat down on one half. Sam then used the hem of her T-shirt to wipe down the low stone shelf in front of them. It was strangely sacrificial in design; like an altar she had seen in an Indiana Jones movie that had scared her more than she had cared to let on. As she rubbed at the rock, Sam gave a long, low whistle. ‘Look at this, Cass,’ she murmured. ‘The perfect skinning-up table. Nice one.’

  Dora didn’t know whether to go and join them. She felt self-conscious and uncomfortable. She hadn’t asked to come here, after all. She’d thought they were all going to hang out on the beach. Oh sod it, she thought. She huffed over to her sister and perched on the edge of the oil drum. ‘Well, this is brilliant,’ she said sarcastically.

  Cassie shrugged. ‘We didn’t force you to come with us, Dora.’

  ‘I didn’t exactly have a choice, did I? Mum said we had to stick together.’

  ‘Who says we have to do what Mum says all the time? You’re a big girl, Dora,’ Cassie taunted. ‘Can’t you make up your own mind?’

  ‘But there’s Alfie too . . . It’s not fair . . .’ She saw Cassie turn to Sam with a roll of her eyes. ‘Oh, forget it,’ she tailed off.

  Sam retrieved a packet of Marlboro Lights from her shirt pocket and pulled out a fat, misshapen roll-up from within. She lit it with a shiny Zippo, took a couple of quick puffs and then passed it to Cassie. Dora watched her sister take a long drag, before exhaling smoke upwards in a slow, steady stream. She looked like she’d done it a million times before. The smoke hung in the dank air like a shimmer of fine cobweb between them.

  ‘Don’t look so shocked, Dora,’ Cassie said.

  ‘I’m not,’ she lied.

  ‘You are. You’re doing that thing you do with your eyebrows.’

  ‘But . . . what if Alfie tells?’ She looked around to where her brother was scampering happily across the sandy floor. He had found a long stick and was energetically whacking the rocky sides of the cave with loud thuds.

  ‘Take that. And that,’ he shouted at his invisible enemies.

  Cassie shrugged. ‘So? What are they going to do?’

  Dora could think of lots of things her parents could do to punish Cassie, but she didn’t bother to list them. Her sister obviously didn’t care.

  ‘Want a drag?’ Sam asked, offering her the spliff.

  ‘No!’ Dora said, a little too quickly. ‘Er, no thank you,’ she repeated. ‘I don’t smoke.’ It came out sounding very prim. Dora blushed.

  Sam just shrugged and pocketed the lighter. She lay back on the sandy floor of the cave and Cassie sank back too, resting her head in her hands and closing her eyes. Now they were all here, Dora was uncertain what to do. She looked around for Alfie. He was standing on a stony ledge peering down into a rock pool, poking at something with the end of his stick.

  ‘Careful, Alfie! Those rocks are slippery.’ He ignored her. Great. Neither Cassie nor Alfie seemed to want her around. She looked back at her sister. She was whispering something to Sam that made the other girl let out a deep, throaty laugh.

  She turned back to Alfie, the lesser of two evils. ‘What have you got there, Alfie?’ she called out.
/>   ‘A crab.’

  ‘Let me see.’ She wandered over, grateful for distraction, and crouched down at the edge of the pool to get a better look. It was a tiny grey thing, almost translucent and disappointing in size. Alfie was tormenting it, using both hands to wield his stick.

  ‘Snap, snap, snap, snap, snap,’ he repeated, over and over. ‘Snap, snap, snap.’

  ‘Your cloak is trailing in the water, Alfie,’ she warned. There was a dark red stain creeping up from the base of the material, leaving it soggy and caked in sand. Alfie didn’t seem to care. He surveyed the damage with a nonchalant shrug and turned back to the pool.

  ‘Snap, snap, snap.’

  They stayed together like that for a while, Alfie digging and poking in the rock pool and Dora looking on, pointing out whelks and periwinkles and a crusty old anemone glued to the rock like concrete. When Alfie got bored with the pool they explored the inner recesses of the stone walls. Without discussion, they began to collect snarls of driftwood, dragging them into a huge pile at the far end of the cavern. Neither of them questioned what they were doing or why they were doing it. They were united in their work and set about it with a quiet dedication, building their wooden pyre until it stood almost a metre high. It seemed that once away from the beach, in the cool, quiet interior of the Crag, it was easy to forget there was a beach just a few hundred metres away littered with blankets and bodies, all sweltering in the sunshine; it was easy to forget about the thirty degree heat baking off the pebbles; it was easy to forget about a new school term just around the corner, and easy to forget all about the time and tides outside their private, enclosed world.

  Dora lifted her head with a start.

  ‘What’s the time, Cass?’ she called out.

  Her sister’s blond head raised an inch off the ground to look at her watch.

  ‘Twelve fifty,’ she replied, sinking her head down again. Another puff of smoke rose up languidly above her head.

  ‘How long have we got before the tide turns?’