The Complete Ingo Chronicles: Ingo, The Tide Knot, The Deep, The Crossing of Ingo, Stormswept
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I used to run to the phone every time it rang.
Yes? Hello? Who is it?
Each time it wasn’t Dad’s voice I felt as if all the lights had been switched off. When the postman came I’d try to get to the door first, and grab the letters with my heart pounding. But it was never Dad’s handwriting on the envelopes. Even when somebody knocked at the door my hopes would spring up again. But why would Dad knock at the door of his own house?
I don’t do those things any more. The phone ringing is just the phone ringing, the postman’s probably bringing another bill, and a knock on the door means a neighbour.
You know how the sea grinds down stones into sand, over years and years and years? Nobody ever sees it, it happens so slowly. And then at last the sand is so fine you can sift it in your fingers. Losing Dad is like being worn away by a force that’s so powerful nothing could resist it. We are like stones, being changed into something completely different.
If you looked casually at me and Mum and Conor now, you might think we were the same people as we were a year ago, except that we’re a year older. But we are not the same people. We’ve changed where no one can see it, inside our minds and our feelings. I didn’t want us to change, but I can’t stop it.
“Where’s Conor? Have you seen him?” Mum’s rushing round, getting ready for work. She’s always rushing these days, but at least that means that she never just sits, staring into space…
Mum’s on the evening shift this week, at the restaurant where she works in St Pirans. She leaves at four, and she’ll be back after midnight.
Mum stops in front of the living-room mirror to pin up her hair and put on her lipstick. She never used to wear lipstick every day…
“Sapphire! Are you listening to me?” Mum snaps. I jump. Mum snaps quite a lot these days. She doesn’t mean it, it’s because she’s always tired. She works in one of the expensive new restaurants down by the harbour. The tips are good, but the hours are long in the summer season. Mum got a twenty pound note from one party last week. Twenty pounds! Imagine having so much money you can give away a twenty pound tip on top of paying for your meal. But then there are also mean people, who spend a hundred pounds on one dinner, and think a pound tip is enough—
“Sapphire! Will you please stop daydreaming!”
“Sorry, Mum.”
“For the third time, where’s Conor?”
“Gone up to Jack’s.” I have no idea where Conor is, but I want Mum to go off to work happy.
“I told him to be back by three,” says Mum. “I don’t like leaving you here on your own, Sapphy. Yes, I know you’ll be all right, but I feel safer if Conor’s here. Oh dear, these school holidays, they go on for ever.”
“But they’ve only just started, Mum!”
“It’s all right for the teachers. They get the whole holiday off work, to be with their own kids. They don’t have to go to work all summer and worry themselves half to death about leaving their children on their own—”
“Mum, we’re not little kids. We’re really sensible, and anyway, Conor’ll be back in a minute. But Mum, I wouldn’t ever be on my own if we had a dog—”
“Sapphire, please don’t start that dog business again. Oh no, now I’ve messed up my lipstick.”
“I think you look nicer without lipstick.”
“The customers don’t,” mumbles Mum as she wipes off the smudged lipstick and puts on more.” Look at the rings under my eyes, Sapphy, I need a bit of colour… Now, if Conor’s not back by five, call me on my mobile.”
It is so unfair. Jack’s got three dogs and we haven’t even got one. His mum said we could have Sadie, my favourite puppy, the one with the folding-down ear, but Mum wouldn’t let us. We kept telling Mum we’d look after Sadie and take her for walks and do everything, but Mum said what would happen when she was at work and we were at school?
Sadie is so beautiful. She’s over a year old now, but Jack’s family hasn’t sold her to anyone else. Her coat is pale biscuity gold and she has huge soft brown eyes that look at you as if she knows all about you. And she understands when you tell her things. I take Sadie out for walks whenever I can. It’s a little bit like having a dog of my own, when I’m out with her. She comes to heel immediately when I say, “Heel, Sadie!” People who go past in cars probably do think she’s my dog.
Sadie is so affectionate, but she’s not clingy. In fact she has a perfect character. She always gets so excited when she sees me. Dogs can tell if you really love them. If Jack’s mum and dad ever sold Sadie to someone else, I don’t think she’d be happy. I know she’d miss me as much as I’d miss her—
“Sapphire, listen,” says Mum. “There’s a pepperoni pizza in the freezer, and Mary’s lettuce, and those spring onions.”
I nod. I hate spring onions. Why does anyone bother to grow them?
“You’ll be all right, won’t you?” says Mum, frowning anxiously. She hates leaving me alone, and she’ll worry about it while she’s at work. She’s got to work, because we need the money. Dad didn’t have any life insurance.
I hate Mum worrying.
“Mum, we’ll be fine.”
Mum gives me a quick rushing-out-of-the-door kiss, and she’s gone. I listen to the car starting then Mum toots the horn and I remember I’ve got to open the gate at the end of the track for her. I run outside, untie the orange twine from the gate post and swing the gate wide. Mum accelerates through, waving at me with a bright smile that doesn’t fool me for a second.
Back into the cottage. It’s too warm inside, and so I leave the door open. I wonder where Conor is?
He’ll be up at Jack’s, on Jack’s computer, or playing with the dogs.
But Conor usually tells me where he’s going. He doesn’t just disappear.
No. Don’t think about that word. I’ll make our tea. We’ll have it early and then we can watch loads of TV. I get out the pizza and put it on a baking sheet. I wash Mary’s lettuce, shake it dry, and carefully cut the roots off the spring onions for Conor. We haven’t grown any vegetables ourselves this year. Dad did all the gardening, and usually he grew everything: onions and potatoes and beans and peas and carrots and all our salad stuff. I used to help him. But now our garden is tangled and overgrown and weedy, and I don’t know where to start clearing it. Dad would hate the way it looks.
But then I remember something. Deep in the weeds there are three gooseberry bushes. I wonder if any of the gooseberries are ripe yet?
They are. They are fat and juicy and when I hold them up to the light I can see the dark seeds inside the yellow skin. I run into the kitchen, get the colander, and start picking. We’ll have gooseberries with sugar and cream. There’s half a carton of clotted cream in the fridge, which Mum brought back from work yesterday.
I pick and pick. Brambles scratch my legs and gooseberry thorns jab at my hands, but I don’t mind. I’ve got nearly a whole colander full now. There’ll be plenty for tomorrow as well, so Mum will be pleased. Conor’s going to love them—
Conor. Where is he? Worry stabs through me again. I look at my watch and it’s twenty-five past five. Mum said to call her if he wasn’t back by five, but I can’t do that. She’d be so scared. She might have an accident from driving back here too fast. And she’d lose a whole night’s pay.
I look around. Everything’s still. Way in the distance I can see Alice Trewhidden watering the geraniums by her front door. Even from a distance you can see the crabbed way that Alice moves. She has to peer up close at things before she can see them. No good asking her if she’s seen Conor.
I could ask Mary.
No, I won’t. Conor hasn’t disappeared. He’s late back, that’s all. If I ask Mary, it will make Conor’s absence seem serious, like the night when Dad—
No. Don’t think about it. I never, ever want to visit that awful night again.
I could phone Jack’s house. Maybe a bit later. But what if his mum answers and says, No, Conor’s not been up here today. Is everything all right, Sapphire?
I go back inside and put the colander of gooseberries on the kitchen table. I’ll top and tail them later.
The cottage seems quieter than ever. I can’t settle anywhere. I turn the TV on and then quickly turn it off, in case it stops me hearing Conor’s bike. Suddenly I think that maybe Conor is up in his bedroom, asleep.
“Conor?” I call. “Conor?”
Maybe he can’t hear me because he’s got the duvet over his head. I run up to my room and climb the loft ladder to Conor’s room, almost sure by now that he’ll be curled up under the duvet.
The bed is empty. The duvet is on the floor. I wonder if he’s left me a note on his pillow, the way people do in books, but of course he hasn’t. I end up searching all round the loft, as if Conor might have left a clue somewhere. I even bend down to peer out of the little window that Dad made. I remember him making it, after he’d boarded the loft for Conor. He let me sit on the floor and watch and pass his tools to him—
No. Sapphire, you are not allowed to think about things like that. They only make you—
They only make your eyes hurt. And Dad’s not dead. You know that. He’s just—
Stop making that stupid baby noise this minute.
Conor’s window. It looks straight out to sea. The sea is striped blue and purple and aquamarine in the late afternoon light. It’s very calm, although the swell is rolling in under the surface of the water. There’s a fishing boat near the horizon.
It’s much too hot and stuffy in Conor’s loft. If only I was down at the cove, walking into the water, feeling the delicious coldness of it move up my body. I’d walk in as deep as I could and the buoyancy of the water would lift me off my feet, and I’d be swimming. I would swim right out into the middle of the bay and lie on my back and stare up into the clear sky… Or maybe I’d dive down, deep, deep into the water, and open my eyes and see the ridges of sand that the tide makes on the sea floor, and the tiny shells. I’d see the red and orange weed that clings on to the rocks and sways to and fro as the tide comes in. I could watch the crabs scuttling when they felt my shadow over them, and the fish in little shoals, spurting this way and that. I could cup my hands into a little cave for the fish to swim in and out…
I’m falling into a dream, even though I’m wide awake. The sea feels stronger and more real than Conor’s loft room. The white walls seem to sway like water. The sea’s all around me, whispering to me in a voice that ebbs and flows like the tide. I want to follow its voice. I want to wade out into the water, far from everything on land. The sea is pulling at me, like a strong current that wraps itself around your legs and lifts you off your feet.
If only I was down at the cove. I must get there. I must go now, this minute.
CHAPTER FOUR
I’ve never climbed down the rocks so fast, even though they’re wet and slippy. The sea’s only just been here, but now the tide’s turned and it’s falling, dragging me with it.
I jump down on to the sand. Another minute and I’ll be in the sea. I kick off my sandals. My toes are in the water, then my ankles, my knees…
The sea is dazzling. I lift my hand to shade my eyes, and as I do, I see him. It’s Conor, far away, sitting on the rocks at the mouth of the cove. I recognise him at once, even though he’s turned away from me. His hair is slick with water. He’s been swimming! But we never swim here alone, because we know how dangerous it can be. Why did Conor come without me?
Cold. I’m cold. I look down. Already the water is up to my waist. My hands trail in the water. That’s so strange. I didn’t think I had waded so deep. And I’m still wearing my shorts and T-shirt. The tide is falling fast and it’s pulling more and more strongly, as if it wants me to come with it. It’s like a magnet. If I didn’t dig my feet into the sand, the tide would carry me away with it.
But what’s Conor doing, sitting on the rocks at the mouth of the cove, where the water’s deep? He must have swum out there.
He hasn’t seen me yet. He’s still got his back to me. I open my mouth to call him. But suddenly Conor turns his head as if he’s…
…As if he’s talking to someone.
I push hard against the tug of the water. I’m not going to let it pull me in deeper. I’m not going to call to Conor. I turn round and the tide sucks my legs hungrily as I force my way back into shallow water. The sea doesn’t want to let me go, but it has to. Its power is broken.
Knee-deep in the water, I wade towards the left side of the cove. I’ll be able to see Conor better from there. I don’t want to attract his attention now. In fact I’m hoping that he won’t see me. From over here, I should be able to get a good view of the rock.
And now I can see them clearly. No, Conor’s not alone. There’s a second head outlined against the edge of the rock. A sleek, dark head. It turns, so I see the profile and the long wet hair. It’s a girl. Her hair is long, right down her back, like mine. And now I realise that what I thought was part of the rock is part of the girl’s body. She must be wearing a wetsuit. She and Conor are close together, talking like old friends who’ve got so much to say that they don’t notice anything or anyone else.
They haven’t seen me. Conor hasn’t even looked up. What are they talking about? They’re much too far away for me to hear their voices.
I’ve never seen her before, I’m sure of it. But I know everyone who lives round here. Who can she be?
Maybe she’s a tourist. Not many tourists come down to the cove, because it’s so hard to find. Maybe this girl asked Conor to help her find the way down, and then they got talking, and went swimming together… without me.
No, I don’t want them to see me. Conor will think I’ve been following him and spying on him. He didn’t want me here, or he’d have told me he was going down to the cove. We always swim together, not just because it’s dangerous to swim alone, but because we like being together.
I wade right out of the water. It pulls at my heels, but feebly now, as if it knows it’s not going to win. My wet shorts and T-shirt stick clammily to my skin. Maybe I should go back to the cottage and change? No, I don’t want to leave Conor, right out there. It isn’t safe.
I wander up and down the tide line, feeling cold even though the air is still warm. I pick up shells and tiny white pieces of driftwood, and let them drop again, and every few minutes I glance out to the rocks at the mouth of the cove. They are still there, Conor and the strange girl who doesn’t live round here, still sitting close together. And they haven’t noticed me at all. They only notice each other.
And then suddenly, the next time I look, the girl has vanished, and Conor is alone. He’s standing right on the edge of the rock, staring down into the deep water. But where has the girl gone? He looks down at the water and his body flexes, as if he’s about to dive in. A wave of panic sweeps over me, from nowhere. Before I know what I’m going to do, I’ve yelled out his name.
“Conor! CONOR!”
He looks up, stares around. I run along the water’s edge, waving and calling.
“Conor, it’s me! Conor!”
He turns and sees me. For a long moment we stare at each other across the water. We are too far away to see each other’s expressions. And then, slowly, he raises his hand and waves to me.
“Conor, come back! Tea’s ready!”
He waves again, and begins to pick his way carefully back across the wet, slippery rocks at the side of the cove. It would be quicker to dive in and swim across to me, but he doesn’t do that. He scrambles all the way back across the rocks that line the edge of the cove, and only jumps into the water when it is shallow. Knee-deep, he splashes towards me. He’s frowning – not in an angry way, but just as he frowns when he’s doing his toughest maths homework.
“What are you doing here, Saph?”
“Looking for you.”
“But it’s not time for tea yet, is it?”
I look down at my wrist, and then I realise something terrible. I must have walked into the water with my watch on. My beautiful watch that Dad got for me in Truro. Now I remember my arms trailing in the water. I forgot all about my watch! I can’t believe it. The hands point to five past seven, but the second hand isn’t moving. I shake my wrist hard. Nothing happens. My watch has stopped.
“Oh, Saph. You went into the water with it on,” says Conor, looking at my wet shorts and T-shirt.
“It’s broken.”
“Maybe it’ll be all right if we dry it out. I’ll take the back off and see,” says Conor. But we both know it won’t be all right.
“It’s broken, Conor.” Thick, painful tears crowd behind my eyes. Dad helped me to choose the watch, but he didn’t choose for me. The shop assistant had laid my three favourites out on the counter. A watch with a blue face and gold hands, a silver watch on a silver wristband, and this watch. My watch. Dad waited and didn’t say anything while I tried them all on again, for the third time. I held my wrist out to see how each one looked, and then I knew. This one was mine. I loved it. But it was the most expensive of the three. I took it off and put it down.
“I think I like the blue one best,” I said. I’d looked at the price labels, and I knew that was the cheapest one. But guess what Dad did then? He picked up the one I liked best and said, “Don’t look at the prices, Sapphy. You only have one birthday a year. It wasn’t the blue one you liked, it was this one.”
“How did you know, Dad?”
“You can’t fool me. I know you too well, Sapphy.”
He knew me too well, because we were alike. Me and Dad, Mum and Conor. It wasn’t that I loved Dad more than Mum, but—
“Don’t cry, Saph.” Conor puts his arm round my shoulders. “You didn’t mean to break it. But listen. You mustn’t come down here and swim on your own. You know we promised Mum we wouldn’t.”
Mustn’t come down here and swim—Indignation shocks my tears away. “What about you? Look at you, your hair’s all wet. You’ve been swimming with that girl, haven’t you?”
“What girl?”
I stare at him. “What girl? The girl who was sitting on the rock talking to you, of course. The girl with long hair like mine.”
Conor looks at me with the elder-brother look I hate. “How could you see her hair, if we were right over on the rocks?”
“I could. I could see her quite clearly.”
“The trouble with you, Saph, is that you see one thing and then you imagine something else.”
“I don’t. I don’t make up stuff. I used to when I was little, but I don’t now.”
“If you say so.”
“I don’t, Conor. Not much, anyway. You’re only saying that to stop me asking about her.”
“All right then. I went swimming after I cleaned out the shed. Maybe I should have told you I was going, but I didn’t. Just for once I wanted…”
I feel cold inside from fear of what he’s going to say. What did Conor want, that I couldn’t give him?
“…I don’t know,” goes on Conor, as if he’s talking to himself. “I wanted some space, I suppose…”
“Oh.”
“And then, after I’d been swimming, I sat on the rocks to get dry. End of story.”
“But Conor – it was this morning that you cleaned out the shed. It’s way past seven o’clock in the evening now. Probably past eight. Mum went to work hours ago. You’re telling me you’ve been here swimming for seven hours?”
“What?” Conor seizes my wrist and stares at the face of my watch.
“It stopped when I went into the water,” I say.
“It can’t be that late. You must have been messing about with your watch.” He shakes my wrist as if the hands of the watch might suddenly run backwards, to match the time he thinks it is.
“Get off me, Conor. It’s evening, can’t you see that? Look at the sun. Look how low it is.”
Conor stares around. He gazes at the mouth of the cave, where the sun is low and golden as it sinks towards the horizon. I watch him realise that I’m telling the truth.
“Maybe I fell asleep,” he says slowly. He looks lost, confused, not like my brother Conor at all.
“You were talking to someone. I saw her. She must have gone off across the rocks,” I say, but this time I say it quietly, not because I want to win an argument with Conor, but to make the truth clear. And this time Conor doesn’t answer.
“Who was she?” I ask, not even expecting him to tell me. And he doesn’t. Conor’s face is pale. Tired out, the way you’re tired out after a long day in the sea. He doesn’t want to talk. Side by side, we walk back up the sand, towards the rocks, the boulders, the way that leads home. I feel shaky all over. There was a girl there, I know there was. One minute she was sitting on the rocks with Conor, and then she was gone.
In bed that night I lie awake. Conor’s upstairs in his loft room. He can’t climb down the ladder without me knowing. I’m afraid to fall asleep in case he creeps past me, down the stairs and out of the cottage. But why would Conor want to do that? I can’t think of a reason, and yet I can’t stop being afraid.
There was no reason for Dad to leave us, either.
I know Conor’s not asleep yet, because a minute ago I heard his feet stepping lightly across the floor above me, towards the window. The slap of bare feet, and then silence. He’s by his window, looking out towards the sea. I know it for sure. My eyes are stinging with tiredness but I can’t let go and drop into sleep. Not yet, not until Mum comes back.
We both promised Mum that we would never go off swimming alone in the cove. It’s so quiet and lonely there that if anything happened, there would be no chance of help. We’ve always kept our promise, until today. It wasn’t just Conor who broke it, either. If I hadn’t seen him on the rock, I would have gone on walking deeper into the water, with the sea pulling me like a magnet.
How far would the sea have pulled me? Maybe there’s sea magic too, the same as Dad once said there was earth magic. Granny Carne’s magic was mostly benign, Dad said. But what about the sea’s magic? The sea’s strong, and wild, and if you make a mistake the sea will make you pay. Sometimes you pay with your life.
Dad used to say that the sea doesn’t hate you and it doesn’t love you. It’s up to you to learn its ways, and keep yourself safe.
But I didn’t even think about keeping myself safe today, down at the cove. All I wanted was to go with the tide. I didn’t even think of Mum or Conor, because the sea was pulling me so hard.
Is that how Conor felt? Did he forget about all of us, so that hours passed like minutes? He was talking to that girl. He was. I didn’t imagine it. She was wearing a wetsuit, and her hair was long and wet and tangly, hanging over her shoulders and hiding her body. They were laughing and talking. She and Conor didn’t look as if they’d just met for the first time.
My watch! Mum will go crazy when she finds out that my watch isn’t working any more. She said it was too good for everyday, and I should put it away and only wear it on special occasions.
“Dad said I could wear it every day,” I argued. In the end Mum agreed.
“But you’d better look after it, Sapphy. You can be so careless.”
She sounded like my school report. Good work is spoiled by carelessness. Sapphire needs to concentrate, and stop daydreaming in class.
Mum said, “It’ll be a miracle if that watch is still on your wrist in six months’ time, Sapphy.”
“It will be.”
“Good. I’m hoping you’ll prove me wrong.”
Mum was wrong. My watch is still on my wrist, and more than a year has passed. Maybe she won’t notice that it isn’t working any more.
Conor’s up there in his loft room, not moving, not sleeping, staring out of the window. All I want to hear is the tread of Conor’s bare feet back over the floorboards to his bed. But he stays at the window. I pull my curtain open, and see that the moon is rising. Even ordinary things are starting to look mysterious. The thorn bushes look like bodies that have been bent and bowed. Those white towels on the washing line that I forgot to bring in look like ghosts. It is so bright that you could find the path down to the cove quite easily by moonlight. Sometimes the moon makes a path on the sea and it looks real and solid, as if you could walk out on it to the horizon.