The Tide Knot. Helen Dunmore

written all over you today. Don’t tell me you haven’t been there. Don’t tell me you haven’t got Ingo’s music in your ears again. And where you go, that dog’s bound to follow, since she’s yours.”

      “But I didn’t take her with me, Granny Carne. I left her up at the top of the steps.”

      “That’s no protection for a dog like Sadie. She followed you in her heart. She went in your footsteps until she could go no more. She near burst her heart with fear for you.”

      Sadie is struggling to her feet. I rush to support her.

      “No, let her stand. She’s best alone for now. Give her a few minutes and we’ll be able to walk her up to mine.”

      I don’t ask any more questions. To tell the truth, I’m a little afraid of Granny Carne today. She knows too much. She makes me have thoughts I don’t want to have. I know everyone comes to her with their troubles, but maybe they don’t always like the answers they get from her. She won’t let me touch Sadie. Surely Granny Carne can’t believe I’d ever hurt Sadie?

      “Yes, she’s been on a long journey,” repeats Granny Carne. “You ever seen a man near frozen after he comes out of the sea half drowned, when he’s been clinging to a piece of wreckage for hours? You don’t sit him by the fire. You let him warm gently, so his body can bear it. Sadie will find her way back to life, but she needs time. She needs the Earth around her, Sapphire. The breath of Ingo is too strong for her, in her present state.”

      “How’s your Conor?” Granny Carne goes on as we set off walking slowly up the footpath. Sadie pads along cautiously, as if she’s not sure yet that her paws will hold her up.

      “He’s fine.”

      “Happy in St Pirans?”

      “I don’t know. I think so. He wants to be happy there, anyway.”

      “And you don’t?”

      “It’s not so much that I don’t. It’s that I can’t. Granny Carne, I didn’t mean to hurt Sadie.”

      “I know that. But it’s hard to see a way clear in all this. I don’t see it myself yet. Only that there’s a reason why you and Conor are as you are. It’s for a purpose. Could be that a time’s coming when there’ll be a purpose in the two of you having this double blood. There’ve been others. The first Mathew Trewhella was one – he that left the human world and went away with the Mer. Your own father was another. But I never knew any with the Mer blood and the human divided so equal as it is in you. Half and half, you are. It must be the way the inheritance has come down to you. It weakens in one generation, and grows strong in the next.”

      “Do you mean that Conor and I are exactly half Mer and half human?”

      “Only you, my girl. Only you. The Mer blood is not near as strong in Conor, and it never will be, for he fights it down every day.”

      “I know.” Now I understand better what Conor meant when he said, If you really struggle, you can stop yourself taking the next step.

      “Conor doesn’t want to be half and half, does he?” I ask. “He wants not to be Mer at all.”

      “Maybe he does.”

      Except for Elvira, I think.

      “He fights it,” says Granny Carne. “Your father didn’t fight so hard. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

      “No.”

      “You’re old enough to know now, my girl, that things don’t just happen to us. Somewhere in us we agree to them. We let things happen, though even those closest to us might think we’re still fighting.”

      I feel cold and tired. I know what she’s saying. She’s telling me that my father wasn’t snatched away against his will. And I do know that, really, after all these months. It is seventeen months since he left us now, and his boat was found empty and upturned, wedged in the rocks. Everyone else thinks he drowned. Only Conor and I keep the faith.

      For a long time I could convince myself that some mysterious force was preventing Dad from communicating with us, but I can’t make myself believe this any more. If Dad wanted to speak to me, he would.

      “Nearly there,” says Granny Carne. “She did well.”

      “Brave girl,” I say. “Brave girl, Sadie,” and I make my voice warm and full of praise, because she deserves it, even if my heart is cold and tired. Granny Carne has been walking between Sadie and me, but now she steps aside. Sadie presses up to me, the way she always does. I stroke her warm golden back. Minute by minute, Sadie’s coming back to herself. Already her fur feels sleek and her eyes are brighter. She turns her head and looks at me as if to say, “It’s all right, I’m not going to leave you.” Why are dogs so forgiving? My eyes are prickly, but I‘m not going to cry. Sadie hates it when I cry.

      Here’s the grey stone cottage that looks like part of the granite hill. Granny Carne pushes open the door and we go inside. There’s just one large room downstairs, painted white, with a stove to heat it and a few splashes of brilliant colour from the tablecloth and cushions. The room is very simple, but not bare. Everything looks worn smooth by years and years of use. I remember the last time I came here, with Conor, that hot summer day when Granny Carne first told us about our Mer inheritance. It was the day when Conor talked to the bees. That seems a long time ago.

      “I’ll bring down an old blanket for Sadie,” says Granny Carne. “She’ll need to sleep the night here, to get her strength back.”

      Granny Carne disappears upstairs before I can protest. Sadie can’t stay here overnight. We’ve got to get back before Mum realises I didn’t go to school today.

      “You’ll be staying over too, Sapphire,” says Granny Carne, returning with a folded blanket. It doesn’t look like an old blanket. It’s made of thick, creamy wool and it looks as if it came off Granny Carne’s own bed. She lays it down by the stove for Sadie.

      “I can‘t stay, Granny Carne. I’ve got to get back before it’s dark. Mum thinks I’m at school—”

      “Sadie needs you here.”

      “But Mum—”

      “I’ll get a message to her. Soon as you’re settled, I’ll walk down to the churchtown and speak to Mary Thomas. She’s got a telephone.” Granny Carne says this as if telephones are something rare and undesirable. “Your mother will know you’re safe enough with me.”

      Granny Carne has two bedrooms upstairs: a large one, and a smaller room which she calls the slip room. That’s where I’m going to sleep. I’m resigned to it now: I can’t leave Sadie. There’s a china washstand with a jug of water that Granny Carne has brought in from the trough where the spring rises. There’s no bathroom. When Granny Carne wants a bath, she heats water on the stove and fills an enamel bathtub, which hangs from a hook on the wall. It’s quite small with a shelf inside to sit on. Granny Carne calls it a hip bath. Try it yourself, my girl, she says, but I say that a wash will do me fine. There’s no toilet in the house either. The outside toilet, which Granny Carne calls the privy, is so cold that I hope I don’t have to go at night. She hasn’t even got any toilet paper, only cut-up squares of the Cornishman stuck on a nail.

      It gets dark early. Sadie doesn’t want to eat, but she drinks some water. Granny Carne has gone down to the churchtown, so Sadie and I are alone in the cottage. I wonder what Mary Thomas will think when Granny Carne tells her we are staying here? As far as I know, nobody has ever stayed overnight at Granny Carne’s cottage. People respect Granny Carne, but they’re also afraid of her because of all that she knows. There are a lot of stories about the way she can see into the future, and heal wounds that ordinary medicine can’t cure. I don’t mean sicknesses like cancer; I mean sicknesses that are inside people’s minds. Granny Carne has a power with those.

      I still don’t know whether or not I really believe that Granny Carne can see into the future.