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And don’t you ever go there, Sapphire, when you’re old enough to take the boat out by yourself. Those rocks are a powerful place, and they’ve got a bad appetite for boats and human flesh. To sail near them is like putting your head into a wolf’s jaws. After Dad said that, I could always see the shape of a wolf’s head in the farthest of the Bawns. We never went in close, not even for fishing. But now Roger has taken Conor there. Conor must have agreed, even though he knows how bad the Bawns are.
I rush downstairs. “Mum! Did you tell Roger not to take Conor close to the Bawns?”
“Roger’s a very experienced diver, Sapphy. He knows all about risk assessment.”
“Oh, Mum! He doesn’t know this coast like we do. It’s dangerous by the Bawns.”
A shadow of fear crosses Mum’s face, but she makes a big effort and answers cheerfully. “Conor’s safe with Roger. And look how calm it is today. Now, have you sorted the washing? I want the whites first.”
“Mum, it’s the Bawns, they shouldn’t go there—” but Mum’s closed her ears. I can’t believe that this is Mum, who hates the sea and fears for everyone that goes on it. And now, the one time she should be frightened, she isn’t. Mum, who used to issue storm warnings every time Dad took me out. I can remember when I was little the way Mum used to pick me up and hug me tight after I’d come back from fishing or taking photos with Dad. She would squeeze the breath out of me with relief.
Mum even chose the back bedroom for herself and Dad, because it faced inland.
Now she lets Conor go off in Roger’s boat, even though he’s almost a stranger, and he doesn’t know a zillionth of what Dad knew about the coast and the currents here. Dad knew the sea almost as well as the Mer.
I mustn’t think about it now. I mustn’t let Mum guess about the Mer, or Ingo, or any of it. She wouldn’t understand and it would only make her more afraid of the sea than ever.
“How long have they been gone, Mum?”
“For heaven’s sake, Sapphy, stop fussing! Conor will be fine with Roger. Roger’s got full safety equipment, and his mobile.”
“There’s no reception out there.”
“All they’re doing is testing the engine, taking the boat near the Bawns, doing some soundings and coming back. And then we’ll all have tea.”
I can’t believe it. Mum’s making it sound like an Enid Blyton story: have a nice adventure, and then home for tea. But Ingo isn’t like that. They weren’t anywhere near the Bawns when I saw Roger, I want to say. They were much farther out than that. Testing the engine, eh? But never in a million years can I tell Mum about lying in the sunwater, far out to sea, and feeling the shadow of Roger’s boat come over me.
“There they are now!” says Mum, going to the door. She can’t stop herself from sounding relieved. She heard the sound of footsteps and voices before I did. Roger’s deep voice says something muffled, and Conor answers. Mum flushes slightly. A little smile grows at the corners of her mouth, and I know she’s happy because Roger and Conor are getting on well. But that’s what Conor is like. He’s the easy one, who makes friends everywhere he goes.
Conor and Roger take off their shoes outside the door. I stay inside.
“Is Saph back yet?” calls Conor. I can hear the anxiety in his voice and I wonder if Mum can.
“Yes, she’s in the kitchen,” says Mum casually, going out to meet them.
“When did she get back?”
“Oh, just a little while ago. You were right, she was out walking Sadie. You two sound as if you’ve had a good time.”
“We have,” says Roger heartily. “Or at least, I have. It was a pleasure to have you along, Conor.”
What a creep. But then I hear Conor. “Yes, it was good. Can we go out again next time you’re down?”
“No problem,” agrees Roger. “I’m grateful for the local knowledge. I’d have scraped when we came off the mooring, Jennie, but for Conor.”
Conor protests that Roger would have done fine without him, and they all laugh. And now they come in through the dark doorway, blinking as people do when they’ve been out on the bright sea for hours. My eyes are already used to the indoors, and so I see Roger’s face clearly. He startles when he sees me, just a little. He wants to hide it, but he can’t. He comes farther into the room, trying to look as if he isn’t staring at me. But he is. He’s measuring my face against something in his mind. He’s trying to tell himself that what he thinks he’s seen out on the deep water can’t possibly be true.
“Hi, Roger,” I say cheerfully. Mum gives me a pleased look, because I’m being friendly at last, and forgetting all that nonsense about not liking Roger.
“Let’s all have some tea,” she says. “I’ve made a coffee and walnut cake.”
“Wow, coffee and walnut, my favourite,” says Roger enthusiastically. But he is still staring at me, and a frown knits on his forehead. Maybe he isn’t going to enjoy the coffee and walnut cake quite as much as Mum hopes.
Roger’s not the only one who is watching me. Conor sends me a meaning look. “Upstairs,” he mouths silently. Aloud, he says, “Be down in just a minute, Mum. Got to change my jeans – there was water in the bottom of the boat.”
But Conor’s jeans are dry. Another lie for Conor. I follow him upstairs. If he keeps on lying like this, how long will it be before people stop always believing him?
“What are you playing at?!” whispers Conor angrily as soon as we get to the top of stairs. He grabs my arms so I have to turn and face him.
“What d’you mean? Shut up, Conor, they’ll hear! You’re hurting my arms.”
“No, I’m not,” says Conor. “I never hurt you. Saph, you must be crazy. First of all you go to Ingo again, and on your own. How many times do I have to warn you?”
“It was all right, Con. Their time was nearly the same as ours today.”
“Today, maybe,” says Conor grimly. “You were lucky. I had a feeling it would be OK though, I don’t know why. I wasn’t as frightened as I was the time before. So I made up some stuff for Mum about Jack calling to ask if you’d walk Sadie because he was going surfing.”
“Conor, you’re such a bad liar. The sea’s flat.”
“Yes, but Mum didn’t think of that. You got away with it this time. Or at least you nearly did. Roger saw you. Now he’s trying to convince himself it was some weird refraction of your image. You know, like a mirror image of you got beamed up into the air and reflected underwater, because of freak weather conditions.”
“He can’t believe that. It’s impossible.”
“Not as impossible as looking over the side of the boat and seeing you relaxing underwater with a big smile on your face. And seeing that you didn’t need to breathe. And you were miles out as well.”
“Did you see me too?”
“No. He didn’t say anything straight away. I guessed something was wrong because of the way he went all still and tense, but I don’t know him well enough to ask. Then after a while he turned round and said he’d seen something that couldn’t possibly be there. A girl underwater. Not a drowned girl, but a real girl looking up at him. And then he said: You’re not going to believe this, Conor, but she looked exactly like your sister. She could have been her twin. And then he started saying all that stuff about light rays bending and images refracting. But I knew he didn’t really believe it, he was just trying to convince himself. So I said that there have always been mermaids around here, and maybe you had a mermaid double. That made him laugh.”
“He laughed at the Mer?”
“Sapphire, please. I was trying to make him laugh. I wanted him to think it was all crazy and impossible and so he couldn’t have seen anything. He said, Well, one thing I know for sure is that your sister isn’t a mermaid. I’ve seen her walking and she definitely has two feet.
I can’t stop myself. I glance down at my legs to make sure, and yes, there are my feet, safely inside my trainers. Relax, Sapphire, relax. Conor is on your side. He’s only trying to cover up for you, and make Roger believe that he can’t have seen you down there in the sunwater.
“I’m sorry, Con,” I say. “I know you still do.”
“Still do what?” asks Conor blankly.
“Still care about Dad. Still want him to come back.”
“Of course I do,” says Conor impatiently, as if he’s forgotten all about our argument. “But Saph, listen—”
“What?”
“You don’t need to be so against Roger. He’s all right.”
“He is not all right! He’s a diver. He’s the enemy of the Mer.”
Conor doesn’t answer for a little while. He watches my face very carefully, and then he says, in a cautious voice, “But Sapphire, you’re not Mer, are you? You belong to the Air. You’re human. Like me and Mum and Roger.”
“I’m not like Roger!” I spit out, before I know what I’m going to say.
“But you are like me, aren’t you?” Conor goes on, still in that careful voice, as if he’s not quite sure what I might do or say next. “We’re brother and sister. Same genes. Human genes, Saph.”
“Yes,” I say uncertainly. Of course I belong with Conor, my brother. But I’m remembering what I said to the dolphins. I belong in Ingo too. Even though Faro is right, and what I know about Ingo is as small as a grain of sand, I don’t feel like a stranger there. I feel different when I’m in Ingo. More alive. More… more myself.
“Conor. Tell me truthfully. Do you truly believe that we’re all Air, and not Mer at all? You and me, I mean?”
“But Saph, what else could we be but human? We’ve got a human mother and a human father. That makes us a hundred per cent human. Why do you want to believe anything different?”
“I don’t know.” Suddenly I feel tired all over. Conor is standing right next to me, but he’s far away. “I don’t know why I believe it, but I can’t help it. I feel it, Conor. When I’m in Ingo I’m free. I can go anywhere, wherever I want.”
“Only if you’re holding on to Faro’s wrist,” says Conor sarcastically. “I don’t see what’s so free about that.”
“But I don’t need to do that any more.”
“What? You don’t need to do that any more?” repeats Conor slowly. “No. Of course, you’re right. It’s true. You can’t have been with Faro when Roger saw you, otherwise Roger would have seen him too. You mean you can breathe and move and do everything on your own, all the time you’re down there?”
“Yes. If I want to go really fast though, I hold on to Faro or we get the dolphins—”
“You should never have gone back there, Saph. It’s dangerous. It’s changing you. Each time you go, it draws you deeper in. I keep trying to make you understand. Why won’t you listen?”
“No, Conor, why won’t you listen for once? You should have been with us today. You don’t understand what it’s like. We rode on the dolphins and I nearly understood what they were saying. It doesn’t hurt at all to go into Ingo now, not like it did the first time. And Faro and I—” I stop. I’d been about to blurt out that Faro could hear my thoughts.
“Faro and you what?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“Faro and you what?”
“Conor, it’s nothing. Don’t look at me like that. It’s just that he can – I mean, we can – we can see into each other’s minds. Just a bit. I can see his thoughts and he can see mine, the way fish do in shoals. They share their memories, did you know that?”
“I do not believe I’m hearing this. Sapphire. You – are – not – a – fish. You are not even partly a fish. Get over it. You are my sister and you live in Senara Churchtown, West Penwith, Cornwall, the Earth, the Universe. Not in ***!!!!*** Ingo!”
“I wish Mum could hear you swearing like that.”
“Why don’t you swim off and tell her? Assuming you can still remember enough human words? Mum can’t share your thoughts like Faro, remember. She’s only human.”
“Conor, we mustn’t!”
“Mustn’t what?”
“Argue.”
“I’m not arguing.”
“Nor am I.”
Face to face, not arguing, we can’t think of anything else to say. But without saying anything, I know that something has shifted. Conor is my friend again. Maybe that sounds a strange thing to say, because how can your brother not be your friend?
“All the same, Saph,” says Conor after a while, “I am going out with Roger again. I do want to learn to dive. Roger’s going to fix up a course for me. He’s got a mate who’ll give me the course for nothing, in exchange for a favour Roger did him. It’s really interesting, what Roger does. It’s the kind of thing I’d like to do one day.”
“It’s dangerous,” I say, and then I realise I’m echoing what Conor’s just said to me. “The Mer don’t like it, Conor. And in their own world – in Ingo – they’re powerful. We aren’t.”
“I know, I know. Can you please stop being the Mer Broadcasting Company for two seconds? Listen. Roger’s not trying to do harm. He’s not working for an oil company or anything like that. He knows loads about marine ecology, Sapphire. He cares about it. That’s what he’s interested in. You ought to talk to him.”
“Don’t go out with him, Conor.”
“But why not?You’ve been out in Dad’s boat hundreds of times and nothing’s ever happened. Well, not much, anyway. So have I. What’s so different about Roger?”
“I don’t know. I can’t say. It’s feels like – I don’t know. Like bad weather coming, when the sun’s still shining. But you can see the storm moving in from the sea. And you feel the pressure inside your head.”
“OK, I promise, if it’s bad weather, or if it even looks like bad weather, I won’t go,” says Conor. But it wasn’t bad weather I was talking about. It was a different kind of storm. If I could put what I’m afraid of into the right words, then surely Conor would understand.
“And Roger won’t go out if there’s a bad forecast. He’s very careful. Divers have to be. Come on, Saph, we’d better go downstairs.”
I’m not finding the right words. But at least Conor won’t be going out again with Roger for a while, so I’ll have time to persuade him.
“Hurry up, Saph, Mum’ll be waiting.”
“She won’t. She’s happy talking to Roger. Anyway, you’d better change your jeans first, hadn’t you?”
“Why?”
“Because you told Mum they were wet. And it’s a good idea for Mum to keep on thinking that at least one of us tells the truth.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#ulink_5afcebd3-c9e3-53b5-a03f-614c65f2ca95)
All through tea I’m on edge in case Roger says something about seeing me underwater. I can’t eat more than half my slice of cake, even though it’s one of Mum’s best, and Mum is trying to feed me up. After Roger’s eaten two fat slices, Mum asks if he’d like a fresh pot of tea.
“You sit down,” he says, “I’ll make it, Jennie. You deserve a rest.” Then he turns to me and Conor. “Your mother is an amazing woman,” he announces, sounding like a character in a TV sitcom. “The best waitress in town, best cook I know – finest coffee and walnut I’ve ever tasted, Jennie.”
“Is that all I’m good for? Baking cakes and running around the restaurant?” asks Mum, but she doesn’t sound cross at all. Her voice is full of teasing laughter.
“I think you know that’s not the case,” says Roger, and they laugh together.
For several reasons this conversation makes me prickle. We know that Mum is a good cook. We know how hard she works. Isn’t that why we try all we can to help her? We don’t need Roger to tell us. It’s our life, not his – none of it is Roger’s business at all – and yet the way he laughs with Mum makes me feel as if I’m the one who is left out. I try to catch Conor’s eye to see what he thinks, but he’s on his way out already.
“Got to fetch the milk, Mum. See you in a bit.”
“I’ll make that tea,” says Roger, dragging his eyes away from Mum.
“Sapphire’ll help you, won’t you, Sapphy,” says Mum, settling herself luxuriously in her chair and closing her eyes. “Now this is heaven. All the meals cooked, nothing to do for the rest of the evening… Sapphy, love, show Roger where things are in the kitchen.”
Roger and I traipse into the kitchen. As soon as I’m alone with him, I suddenly realise how big he is. Not heavy, but broad and strong and tall. He has to duck his head to go through the kitchen doorway.
I don’t like being alone with him. I’m scared of what he might ask, so I start to gabble to fill up the silence. “We keep the tea bags in this tin up here, and the kettle’s over here. It doesn’t switch itself off, because the switch is broken. Mum’s going to buy another kettle when she’s been paid. If you fill it up to five there’ll be enough for a pot.”
