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

did you drag me away like that?” I complain as we set off for home. “Jack’s mum was being really nice. She’s made loads of scones for the bed and breakfast people too. I saw them on the table. If we’d stayed, she might have given us a cream tea.”

      “We need to get home. You shouldn’t be outside. It’s not safe.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “It’s calling you, isn’t it?”

      “What’s calling me?” I know the answer, but I’m going to make Conor say it.

      “You know.” He looks around and lowers his voice. “Ingo. Saph, were you listening to what Granny Carne said?”

      “Of course I was.”

      “All that stuff about the first Mathew Trewhella. Granny Carne was talking as if she knew him.”

      “Well, maybe she did,” I answer vaguely. I’m still thinking about Sadie. Maybe she is meant to be my dog. Maybe it’s really going to happen one day. Mum’s going to change her mind—

      “Wake up, Saph! How can Granny Carne have known someone who lived hundreds of years ago? It’s all crazy.”

      “Then why are you so bothered about it?”

      “I can’t believe you’re so thick sometimes, Saph. What I want to know is why Granny Carne was talking about the first Mathew Trewhella. And why Ingo’s growing strong. If it’s all got something to do with Dad then we’ve got to find out more.”

      I hear the echo of Dad’s voice, in the dark church long ago. I remember my own fingers tracing the outline of the wooden mermaid’s tail. I feel the gashes cut into the carving.

      “The mermaid enchanted him,” says Conor. “She pulled him out of the church choir, down the lane and down the stream that runs to Pendour Cove. He never came back. People said that years later you could stand on Zennor Head and hear him sing his Mer children to sleep.”

      “It’s only a story,” I say. “It can’t have really happened like that. And Granny Carne can’t possibly have known the first Mathew Trewhella.”

      “But you heard what she said,” says Conor. “About his singing and everything. Just as if she’d heard him herself. Do you remember how Dad always used to say Granny Carne had never been any younger than she is now? Never any younger, and never any different. Maybe she does remember.”

      “You mean you think she’s hundreds of years old?”

      “I don’t know. It sounds impossible when you say it like that. But when you’re with her, don’t you feel it?”

      “Feel what?”

      “Her power,” says Conor slowly. “That’s why I want to know why she’s talking to us. I think she wants us to do something.”

      “Or not do something,” I mutter, remembering how Granny Carne’s force barred the way to the sea.

      “What?”

      “Nothing,” I say.

      It’s dark inside our cottage, after the brightness of the day. Conor goes around shutting the windows, locking the back door that we never normally lock. I watch him without saying anything. I’m trying to remember everything I can about the story Dad told me, long ago, about the man who vanished with a mermaid, and who had the same name as him.

      “Conor,” I say at last, “time doesn’t work like that. One person can’t live for hundreds of years.”

      “I don’t know… time in Ingo isn’t like time here, is it? Maybe there are all kinds of time, living alongside each other, but usually we only experience one of them. Granny Carne might be living in her own time, and it might be quite different from ours. Think of the way oak trees live for a thousand years.”

      “Earth time,” I say, not really knowing why I say it.

      “Yes. If she’s got earth magic, then she could be living in earth time. And Faro and Elvira are living in Ingo time. So what are we living in?”

      “I don’t know. Real time? Human time?”

      “They’re all real. But human time; yeah, could be. So let’s say there’s earth time and Ingo time and human time, that’s three kinds of time already, and there could be more.”

      “Ant time, butterfly time, planet time, cream-tea time—”

      “I’m not messing around, Saph. Wait a minute. Look at Ingo time. I don’t think Ingo time is fixed against ours. It’s not like one year of Ingo time equals five years of human time, or whatever. It’s more complicated than that. Sometimes Ingo time seems to run at nearly the same pace as ours, but sometimes it’s quite different… almost like water flowing faster or more slowly, depending on whether it’s running downhill or along a flat surface – yes, maybe that’s it, something to do with the angle of Ingo time to human time—”

      I switch off. Conor will carry on like this for hours once he gets going. That’s why he’s so good at maths.

      Josie Sancreed’s jeering face comes into my mind. “I wonder what they really said when that first Mathew Trewhella disappeared,” I say. Were there people like Josie living then? Probably.

      “I bet they said he’d gone off with another woman,” says Conor. His face is hard. “Just like they say about Dad.”

      So Conor knows.

      “Did you hear about what Josie said to me, Conor?”

      “It’s what everyone says behind our backs. Josie said it to your face, that’s the only difference.”

      “But Dad hasn’t gone off with another woman! He hasn’t gone off with anyone. He would never do that to us.”

      “Maybe not.”

      “You know he hasn’t, Conor,” I say angrily. Conor has got to believe in Dad. We’re a family. Me and Conor and Dad and Mum.

      Me and Conor and Mum.

      “I don’t know anything any more,” says Conor. He shrugs. “Sorry, Saph. Everything’s upside down and inside out today.”

      It’s so rare for Conor to have doubts about anything that I don’t know what to say. Conor’s my big brother, the one who knows things. If he doesn’t know where he is, then where am I?

      “It’ll be OK,” I say doubtfully. “Maybe Granny Carne just likes telling old stories because she’s old.”

      “She told us about that first Mathew Trewhella for a reason,” says Conor, in the same way as he’s always explained things to me, like who is in which gang at school, and why. I knew how the playground worked before I even went to school, because of Conor. “Don’t get scared, Saph, but I think Granny Carne believes we’re in danger.”

      “How could we be in danger?”

      “He never came back, did he? The Mathew Trewhella in the story, I mean. Maybe Dad won’t ever come back either.”

      “Conor, don’t.”

      Conor turns and grips my wrists hard. “They got Mathew Trewhella, didn’t they? I know what it’s like, Saph. You’re out there in Ingo, and they make you feel that everything back here on land is nothing. Even the people you love don’t count. You can’t even remember them clearly.”

      “I didn’t forget you and Mum!”

      “Didn’t you?”

      “You just got a bit cloudy and far away.”

      “I know. And so you go on, deeper and deeper into Ingo, until you don’t care about anything else—”

      “Did you feel like that?”

      “Of