The Complete Ingo Chronicles: Ingo, The Tide Knot, The Deep, The Crossing of Ingo, Stormswept. Helen Dunmore

can’t do that. I won’t let her. I’ve got to make Mum believe that Dad’s not dead or disappeared off to somewhere like Australia. I know that’s what some people think. They whisper things about Dad, and when Conor or I come close enough to hear they stop whispering, and give us sly little glances that say, We know something you don’t know.

      I roll over in bed and thump my pillow angrily. Josie Sancreed didn’t even bother to whisper. She turned round to me in the playground and said out loud, “Everyone thinks your dad drowned, and they feel really sorry for you, but my mum says most likely he’s gone off with another woman.”

      Gone off with another woman. I couldn’t believe Josie had said that. The words scraped me like gravel when you fall off your bike. Gone off. He’s gone off because he’s found someone better. That’s what’s happened to Mathew Trewhella. Everybody knows, it’s only his family that doesn’t believe it.

      I wanted to run away, right out of the playground and all the way home, but I didn’t. No one was going to make me run away. Josie stared at me with a stupid little smile, but I could tell she was also a bit scared at what she’d done. Loads of people had heard, so she couldn’t pretend she hadn’t said it. Katie said, “Shut up, Josie,” but the rest of the girls just stared at me too. I think maybe they were embarrassed, or they didn’t know what to do, but at the time I thought they were on Josie’s side.

      I couldn’t bear it. I grabbed Josie by the shoulders and shoved her as hard as I could against the playground wall. She fell, and started crying really loudly so all the girls gathered round her and helped her up. “It’s my hand, she’s hurt my hand,” Josie wailed, and suddenly everything was my fault, not Josie’s.

      What was worse was that Mrs Tehidy saw me push Josie into the wall. She started clucking round Josie, and she put her arm around her and took her in to the office to have her hand seen to.

      “I’ll talk to you later, Sapphire,” she said over her shoulder.

      Mrs Tehidy hadn’t heard what Josie said about Dad. I didn’t ever, ever want to hear those words again, so I didn’t tell. Katie was going to, but I wouldn’t let her. So I was sent to Mr Carthew, and he said, “I’m disappointed in you, Sapphire. Violence doesn’t solve anything.”

      Oh, doesn’t it? I thought. As soon as I got out of Mr Carthew’s office, I went to find Josie. Mrs Tehidy had finished washing Josie’s hand and she’d put a big plaster on it. Josie was in the girls’ toilets telling everyone what I’d done to her. I walked in, and they all stopped talking.

      “If you open your mouth about my dad again,” I said, “I’ll push you into the ditch that’s full of nettles, behind the hall.”

      Josie knew I meant it, and so did everyone else. Some people were on my side, because they’d heard what Josie said to me, but Esther put her arm round Josie and said, “Stop bullying Josie, Sapphire.”

      “She’s the bully,” said Katie angrily.

      I never get into fights normally, but it’s funny, once you start it seems easier. And when Josie looked at me in that scared way, I felt good. Maybe violence doesn’t solve anything, but Josie never said another word about Dad. I didn’t tell Conor. He’d only get into a fight with Josie’s brother Michael. And besides, I didn’t feel so good later on, once the hot angry feeling inside me had died down. I went and sat on a tree stump by the school gate. I kept thinking about what Dad would have thought if he’d seen me grabbing hold of Josie like that. And maybe Josie really did hurt her hand. It was quite a big plaster…

      Don’t think about all that now. Think about something else. But the only thoughts that crowd into my head are thoughts I don’t want.

      Roger. I turn around and thump the pillow again. I don’t want Roger the Diver at our table, eating our food. Maybe even sitting where Dad used to sit.

      Suddenly another thought curls over in my mind like a fresh new wave, washing all the tangle of worries away. It’s all right. I don’t even have to be there when Roger comes.

      It’s true. I can go off somewhere else, somewhere far away. It won’t matter how much Mum calls me, I won’t be able to hear her. And she’ll never be able to find me. The thought of it makes me smile. I’ve got somewhere to go now, a place of my own where no one can find me. Ingo.

      I can hear the sea. Even though I’m lying in bed, the sound of the waves is as close as if I were lying on the beach. I can hear each one break on the beach, then the long hushhhh as it goes out again. My window’s shut, but the sea sounds as if it’s inside my room—

      “Sapphire!” Conor’s voice makes me jump. He’s climbed down the ladder from his loft room without me noticing. And the strange thing is that suddenly I realise I’m not lying on my bed any more. I’m standing beside my window, which isn’t shut at all: it’s wide open. But I don’t know how I got there, or who opened the window. Was it me? My hand is on the windowsill and the noise of the sea is louder than ever. A huge wave topples over and crashes on to the sand in a rush and swirl of foam—

      “What are you doing?” asks Conor sharply.

      “What?”

      “Saph, shut that window. Now. I’ve got to talk to you.”

      Slowly, reluctantly, I push the window shut. But the air pushes back, hard. The window wants to be open, wide open, so the noise of the sea can come in—

      “Shut it, can’t you?”

      The snap in Conor’s voice makes me push hard enough to close the window and fasten the catch.

      “Mum’s cooking sausages,” says Conor. “She’s making a late breakfast for you, Saph. Listen, this is what I told Mum about what happened, so you’d better say the same thing. I said you woke up in the night. You had a nightmare and you couldn’t get back to sleep for ages, so that’s why you’re still in bed now. Mum’s really worried about you, Saph. She thinks you’re ill. She kept creeping up to look at you while you were asleep, and she says you don’t look right.”

      “I feel fine.”

      “You don’t look fine. Look in the mirror.”

      I go over to the dressing table Mum bought for me at an auction in Penzance. On top of the dressing table there’s a mirror on a wooden stand. Mum bought it for me after Dad left. She bought some stencils and we painted the stand white and then stencilled shells over it, and painted them sea blue. I painted tiny shells around the frame of the mirror, too.

      You have to bend down to peer into the mirror, because of the way the ceiling slopes at the side of my room.

      I bend down and stare into the mirror. The glass is old, and when you look into it, it’s like looking into another world. The mirror is spotted and tarnished and its light is green, like underwater. My face in the mirror is pale, and my hair hangs over my shoulders like seaweed. The colour of my eyes is swallowed up in huge black pupils. Do I really look like that?

      “Mum says you look washed out,” says Conor.

      But I don’t take any notice. His voice sounds distant, as if he’s not really in the room with me. I’m watching watery ripples of light pass over my reflection, like waves rippling over sand. They move across the glass in their dream-like rhythm, and I count them as they go. One, two, three, four, five… and now there’s the sound of the sea again, soft and sweet this time, like a breath in my ear… closer and closer…

       Full fathom five

      Thy father lies,

       Of his bones

      Are coral made,

       These are pearls

      That were his eyes,

       These are pearls

      That