Melt

by Ele Fountain

  Hester walks in to see what all the fuss is about, she trots straight past Dad and weaves herself around my legs.

  ‘I guess not everyone in this house has missed me,’ smiles Dad.

  Over the next few days, we sleep, eat and talk about the things that happened while we were apart.

  Dad tells us how he saved the files just before we left. He didn’t think he’d need them, but if something did happen, it would be his word against the company’s. About how after the phone call he didn’t want to let me out of his sight. He thought while we were away, he could think of a way to fix things. That he wished he’d just gone to the police.

  On the first warm day of spring, we sit in the garden together, enjoying the sunshine.

  ‘Did this really all happen because you wouldn’t write those reports?’ I ask Dad.

  He smiles. The bruise on the side of his head has nearly disappeared.

  ‘Not writing those reports was a big deal. The company was paying me a lot of money and I wasn’t going to make any for them. The new guy was ruining all their plans. Someone at the top decided to get me out of the way.’

  ‘Do you think they were planning to get you out of the way’—I pause—‘completely?’

  Dad closes his eyes for a second.

  ‘Perhaps. Maybe saying I was stealing company secrets was their plan B.’

  He takes a sip of tea.

  I think about the tea we took with us in a flask, the day we flew to the Arctic. The tea which saved Yutu’s life, so far from anyone else who could help.

  ‘How did the police find you up there?’ I ask.

  ‘Once they’d caught the men trying to break into the house, I don’t think it was very hard. They had nothing to lose by assisting the police, telling them where I was being held. Maybe even a reduced sentence for cooperating. They were only the middle-men after all. Someone at my company was the mastermind.’

  ‘But why did they want to go ahead with the drilling near a town, if it wasn’t safe?’

  ‘Greed can do strange things to people.’

  ‘I thought oil companies made loads of money.’

  ‘But you can always make more. When I wouldn’t agree to say it was safe, they brought forward a second plan, to drill in the Arctic. They had been relying on my reputation to create a convincing report. Something which might make the government change its mind and allow drilling there. But I wouldn’t. A spill would destroy the wildlife and the communities there for ever.’

  I think of Yutu. About how his village is already suffering.

  ‘But you’ve worked in other beautiful places. Don’t they get damaged too?’

  Dad sighs. ‘They do, Bea. Now the Arctic is one of the only wildernesses we have left. We can destroy that too, or we can say enough is enough. There are plenty of other jobs I could do. This one just paid the best.’

  I feel a twist in my stomach. ‘Does that mean we’ll be moving again?’

  ‘Mum and I need to talk about things.’ He squeezes Mum’s hand. ‘But perhaps AW1 has just been brought forward.’

  I feel a fizz of excitement in my stomach. ‘Seriously!?’ I say.

  Dad looks at Mum for a reaction. She is staring at her hand in Dad’s.

  ‘I’m so sorry I believed them,’ she says quietly, looking up at my dad. ‘When those two men came to see me, they made it sound so real. Like there was no room for doubt about what you’d done.’

  ‘You don’t need to apologize. Even once. Definitely not the three hundred times you have since I’ve been back.’ He smiles again. ‘They were professionals,’ Dad says. ‘Criminals, yes, but professionals. It was their job to make you believe them.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘I think we’ve heard enough about me. Let’s talk more about Yutu. I’ve been told that we should be very grateful to him for saving you after you’d crash-landed my plane in the tundra.’

  ‘Yutu?’ I say. I feel my cheeks burning. ‘I saved him first.’

  ‘Well,’ says Dad, ‘I would expect nothing less.’

  I pull the crumpled piece of paper from my coat pocket and smooth it flat. I type in the number scrawled at the top. After a few seconds it starts to ring.

  A voice at the other end says, ‘Halu.’

  ‘Yutu? It’s Bea.’

  ‘Bea, I’ve been hoping you would call.’

  Summer

  Wind whips my hair in all directions. I sweep it from my face and stare across the water, searching for a smooth white shape within the waves. Seconds earlier I spotted my first beluga whale, its pale fin arcing above the water.

  The boat pitches sharply and I grab the handrail, planting my feet a little further apart. I’m not used to the rolling motion of the waves. The floor vibrates gently with the low throb of the engine. I can smell diesel mixed with fresh air and seaweed.

  A woman waves to me from the small cabin at the bow of the fishing boat. I am hitching a ride with old friends of Miki’s. We don’t have a plane we can borrow any more. They use too much fuel, anyway.

  Mum and Dad travelled with me as far as the harbour. We made the same train journey I’d taken three months before only this time in reverse.

  Dad wasn’t keen for me to travel the rest of the way without them, but Mum pointed out that I’d already done it in sub-zero temperatures on a snowmobile, so a fishing boat with experienced sailors seemed fine. And no mercenaries were searching for me this time either. Since Dad came home, things are different with Mum. We talk more. Not so much about things I should or shouldn’t do, but about things we like, or plans for the future.

  I pull the newspaper page from my pocket. Yutu has read everything online, but there’s something extra-special about seeing it in print. It describes Yutu driving me to safety, and how we escaped the bear, about me flying the plane and Miki sending the attackers on a wild goose chase.

  When the story broke, students I’d never met before high-fived me in the corridors. Even Stella wanted to be friends, but we have different definitions of friendship. There are a few girls I hang out with at school now. Girls who like me when I’m just being myself.

  I smile when I think back to my last visit to Yutu’s house. So much has changed since then. Dad is setting up his adventure activity business. Mum has been studying. She used to work as a marine biologist before moving every year took up most of her time. She used to climb, too.

  The boat has been following the coastline north. The hills rising up from the shore are soft shades of yellow and brown.

  The noise of the engine changes as the boat turns gently inland. Several minutes later a scattering of houses appears from behind a low hill. As we get closer, I see a figure standing by a short pontoon. Yutu.

  I clamber over the side of the boat and jump down, helped by Miki’s friends, who can’t be much younger than Miki.

  They greet Yutu by pressing their noses against his forehead, then carry on walking up the pontoon. Yutu turns to me. It’s strange to see him wearing just a T-shirt and jeans. His brown eyes twinkle, the corners of his mouth rise in a smile.

  ‘Hello, Bea,’ he says. ‘Welcome back.’

  I have so much to tell him, yet we barely say a word on the way to Miki’s house. I just breathe in the salty air and feel myself relax into the endless space.

  The door to their home is open. Miki comes out and hugs me. She seems even tinier than before.

  I enter the warm peace of their home. I notice that the carvings and ornaments have gone. Miki sees me glancing around. She exchanges a look with Yutu.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ I say.

  Miki sighs, then presses her fingertips to her eyes. Yutu leads her to a chair.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I ask.

  ‘We have to leave,’ says Yutu.

  ‘Leave where?’

  ‘Our home,’ says Yutu.

  ‘Why? What’s happened?’

  ‘Every year the temperature rises and the permafrost melts a little more. Now the houses in our village are beginning to collap
se, including Grandma’s. There is nothing solid to support them any more.’

  ‘First the animals start to disappear, then the sea ice, now our home,’ says Miki.

  I try to picture Miki in one of the modern houses, with neat flat walls and front doors all the same shade of grey.

  ‘Do you know which house you will move to?’

  ‘There is nowhere in the village. Many people are having to move out, and these houses are some of the most expensive in the country. It’s so hard to build here.’

  I try to take in what Yutu is telling me. ‘So you will have to move away, somewhere else?’

  ‘Yes. It will be a big town, further south.’

  Miki goes over to the stove. ‘We can talk about this later,’ she says. ‘You must be hungry after your journey.’

  After we’ve cleared up the dinner things and Miki is sewing in her chair. Yutu and I sit on the doorstep, bathed in the golden glow of the sun.

  ‘It will only set for a couple of hours tonight,’ he says. ‘In winter it barely rises, in summer it barely sets.’

  ‘Perhaps you can come and visit me next time,’ I say. ‘Miki could come too.’

  ‘She doesn’t really like to leave the village,’ says Yutu, then closes his eyes when he realizes what he’s said. ‘I used to think that I would leave here at the first chance I got. But now I know that depended on me being able to come back. On my home always being here.’

  I let his words sink in. It’s what I’ve always wanted too. Somewhere to really call home.

  ‘I know I’ve travelled around a lot,’ I say, ‘but you showed me how to look differently at what was right in front of me.’

  Simple things, like enjoying silence, noticing the weather, the feel of the ground beneath my feet. Things I never even noticed before, because the bonds which connect people and nature are beginning to fray. Something precious beyond imagining, is coming apart. But it’s not too late to change that.

  Not yet.

  Acknowledgements

  This book was written (mostly) during lockdown. Everyone’s worlds were turned upside down. Thank you to the many amazing friends who helped to turn ours the right way up again. Too many to list here, but special big-up to Phil Sawkins, the Fox Mums, and to Helena, Brian, Poppy and Livvy, for your encouragement, socially distanced visits, doorstep present deliveries, veg patch envy and help with nominators and denominators.

  Thank you to the amazing teaching staff who helped our children and many others to navigate uncharted waters. Mr Vincent somehow managed do this with a newborn baby too.

  Thanks to Charlie Viney as ever. Thank you to Sarah Odedina for your editing wisdom and brilliance, and to Adam Freudenheim and the dream team at Pushkin Children’s Books: India, Rory, Poppy, Elise, Natalie, Kirsten. Thank you to Thy for the beautiful cover, and to Hannah for tidying me up.

  Thank you to the children’s authors whom I admire and learn from daily, and to the booksellers, librarians and reviewers who champion children’s books through thick and thin, and also through pandemics.

  Thank you to Mum and Dad always, and to Judy for your support and common sense.

  Thank you to Tim, Lily and Scarlet, for making home schooling and home working possible. We will never forget Pizza Wednesday, Joe Wicks (or nominators and denominators). Although we frequently forgot which day of the week it was. You are entirely magnificent.

  Copyright

  Pushkin Press

  71–75 Shelton Street

  London wc2h 9jq

  Copyright © Ele Fountain 2021

  Melt was first published by Pushkin Press in 2021

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  ISBN 13: 978–1–78269–288–1

  eISBN 978–1–78269–289–8

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from Pushkin Press

  Designed and typeset by Tetragon, London

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, cr0 4yy

  www.pushkinpress.com