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

be enough for a pot.”

      “I have seen a kettle before,” says Roger mildly. He is watching me. He’s going to say something – ask me something. I must get away—

      But I only get as far as the fridge before he asks casually, “Sapphire, how far can you swim?”

      “I don’t know, quite a long way, I mean, not all that far, depends how flat the sea is—”

      “Your mother tells me that you and Conor aren’t allowed to swim outside the cove.”

      “No, because of the rip. Only if we’re out in a boat with… with someone. Sometimes we swim off the boat.”

      “Have you been out in a boat with… someone… lately? In the last day or two?”

      “No,” I say firmly, and I look Roger in the face because I can prove this isn’t a lie. “I haven’t been out in a boat since… since…” But I can’t say it. Not to Roger.

      “Since what?” he insists. Anger springs up in me. Roger’s trying to act like my father, as if he has a right to question me.

      “Since Dad took me out in Peggy Gordon,” I say. I feel my face burning, but I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to let Roger see me crying.

      “Oh. I see.” Roger is quiet for a while, then he says, quite formally as if I’m an adult like him. “I’m sorry, Sapphire. I didn’t mean to distress you.”

      His face is troubled. For a moment I can’t help believing that he really is sorry. But I don’t want to believe it, or I might start having to – well, to tolerate Roger.

      “S’OK,” I say grudgingly.

      “No, it’s not OK,” says Roger slowly. “None of this is OK, I know that. Your dad dies, a year later I come along… It’s not easy for anyone. Have you thought about how hard it is for your mother?”

      “Dad is not dead,” I flash out furiously. Roger stares at me.

      “He is not dead,” I repeat, more quietly, but with all the force I can find. If only Roger would believe me, how much trouble it would save.

      “You’re a complicated young lady,” he says slowly. ‘And I wish – I wish I could see inside that head of yours.”

      “Well, you can’t. We’re human. We don’t share our thoughts. The kettle’s boiling. I’ll wash the mugs while you make the tea.”

      I’m not sure if I’ll get away with this, but I do. Roger and I finish making the tea in silence. But just before we take it in to Mum, Roger asks, “Sadie. The dog you were walking. She’s one of the neighbour’s dogs, right?”

      “Yes.”

      “What breed is she?”

      “Golden Labrador.”

      “Nice breed.”

      “Yes, she’s—” Suddenly Sadie is so clear in my mind that I can almost feel her warm golden body, her soft tongue licking my hand, her quivering excitement when she knows she’s going for a walk.

      “You like her. You ever had a dog of your own, Sapphire?”

      “No. Mum says it’s too much work.”

      “Well, that’s true, a dog is a lot of work. I had one as a boy myself, and I found out the hard way that my dad meant what he said when he told me: If you get a dog, then it’s you that’s got that dog as long as it lives. But Rufie was the best thing in my life, after we came back from Australia and I found myself stuck in Dagenham. You and Conor could take care of a dog between you, I reckon.”

      “Except when we’re at school.”

      “There’s no one in the neighbourhood who’d keep an eye?”

      I have never thought of this. Never thought beyond pushing against Mum’s prohibition by telling her over and over again that me and Conor will do everything.

      “I don’t know…”

      “Worth thinking about, it seems to me,” says Roger. “Your mother would feel easier that way.”

      “What kind of dog was Rufie?”

      “Black Labrador. Beautiful breed. They get problems with their hips as they grow older, that’s the only thing.”

      I nod. I already know that, and that Labradors don’t live as long as some other dogs.

      “But for good temper and loyalty there isn’t a breed to touch them. Beautiful breed,” says Roger thoughtfully, and he opens the door for us to carry in the tea.

      It’s late at night now. I’m in bed, and everyone else is asleep. Roger’s gone back to St Pirans, and Mum went to bed early because she’s doing the breakfast shift at the restaurant tomorrow. There’s no sound from Conor’s loft. I heard his light click out a long time ago.

      I feel like the last person left awake in the world. If I had my own house, I’d let my dog sleep in my bedroom. Dogs wake up the instant you stir. If Sadie was here she’d know I was awake and I could talk to her.

      I’m not going to think about Roger any more. It’s all been going over and over in my head for hours. Mum, Roger, Dad. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t a child, and then I could be like them and make my own decisions and my family would just have to live with them.

      I’m going to think about Ingo. Dolphin language and sunwater, basking sharks and grey seals, sea anemones, shrimps and cowries and shoals of jellyfish, wrecks and reefs and the Great Currents taking you halfway around the world. Ingo. Ingo. Once you’re through the skin of the water, it doesn’t hurt any more. You dive down and there’s a whole world waiting for you. Blue whales and Right whales and Minke whales, schools of porpoises leaping in perfect formation as if each one knows what the others are thinking. Maybe they do.

      Thong weed and cut weed and sugar kelp, all the names Dad taught me and all the creatures we’ve ever seen. By-the-wind sailors, shore crabs and hermit crabs, bass and wrasse and dogfish and squat lobsters, rips and currents and tides. I wish I was away in Ingo, I wish I was away in Ingo… and as I’m saying these words, I fall into sleep.

      I wake with a start out of deep dreams. Something’s woken me. I push the duvet off me and sit up, listening, but now everything’s quiet. I’m certain I heard something. My skin prickles with fear as I climb out of bed, cross to the window, pull back my curtain and see the moon, strong and riding high.

      “Ssssssapphire!”

      I open the window to hear better. The voice is as soft as a breath, as if it’s travelled a long way to get to me. As soon as I hear it, I know it’s the voice that woke me. It’s not Conor’s voice, or Mum’s. It’s eerie and full of mystery. My skin prickles again and I shiver all over. I don’t think it’s a human voice at all. It’s like the voice the sea would have, if the sea could talk.

      How I wish I could speak full Mer. Can the sea really talk? Can it tell you all its secrets? I’m sure the sea is trying to tell me something now.

      No sound comes from Mum’s room, or from upstairs where Conor’s sleeping. Nobody else has woken.

      “Ssssapphire!” The voice is urgent now. It wants to get close to me but it can’t. The sea can’t reach you on land. It can only come as far as the high-water mark. Granny Carne said that Ingo is strong, but I’m sure it isn’t strong enough for the sea to come to me, washing up the cliff and across the fields and flooding our garden so that waves break below my window.

      “SSSapphire… SSSSapphire…”

      It sounds like waves breaking. All at once I’m completely sure that I’m hearing the sea’s own voice. I can hear salt in it, and surging water, and the roll of the tide. It’s sea magic, talking to me.

      Granny